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THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 

By JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

THE COURTSHIP OF 
MILES STANDISH 

Br HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

SNOW-BOUND 

By JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND 
NOTES BY CHARLES ROBERT GASTON 
PH.D., INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH, RICHMOND 
HILL HIGH SCHOOL, NEW YORK CITY 




NEW YORK 

CHARLES E. MERRILL CO. 






Copyright, 1909, 1921 

BY 

CHARLES E. MERRILL CO. 
[9] 



SEP 13 M» 

§>CU624308 



3fn memory of 
GEORGE R. CARPENTER 

THE PRECISE RHETORICIAN, THE CULTURED 

CRITIC OF AMERICAN LITERATURE, 

THE MAN OF BROAD 

SYMPATHIES 



MttrxiVe lEttglisfy Qkxta 

This series of books includes in complete editions those mas- 
terpieces of English Literature that are best adapted for the use 
of schools and colleges. The editors of the several volumes are 
chosen for their special qualifications in connection with the 
texts issued under their individual supervision, but familiarity 
with the practical needs of the classroom, no less than sound 
scholarship, characterizes the editing of every book in the series. 

In connection with each text, the editor has provided a crit- 
ical and historical introduction, including a sketch of the life 
of the author and his relation to the thought of his time, critical 
opinions of the work in question chosen from the great body of 
English criticism, and, where possible, a portrait of the author. 
Ample explanatory notes of such passages in the text as call for 
special attention are supplied, but irrelevant annotation and 
explanations of the obvious are rigidly excluded. 

CHARLES E. MERRILL COMPANY 



CONTENTS 



Introduction: 



Life of Lowell 9 

Life of Longfellow 14 

Life of Whittier 22 



Poems: 



The Vision of Sir Launfal 29 

The Courtship of Miles Standish 47 

Snow-Bound 129 

Notes: 

The Vision of Sir Launfal ....... 161 

The Courtship of Miles Standish 166 

Snow-Bound 179 

Examination Questions: 

The Vision of Sir Launfal 193 

The Courtship of Miles Standish 194 

Snow-Bound 195 



INTRODUCTION 
LIFE OF LOWELL, 1819-1891 

The writer of the biography of James Russell Lowell 
in the American Men of Letters series rightly speaks of 
1848 as the " Annus Mirabilis" or wonderful year in 
Lowell's life. If Lowell had died at the end of the year 
1848, at the age of twenty-nine, he would have left enough 
work done to have assured him a place among the great 
men of America. It was in 1848 that he published The 
Vision of Sir Launfal, one of his most widely known lit- 
erary productions. 

In the years before 1848 he had been unconsciously 
and consciously preparing himself to be a writer and 
particularly a poet. His early home surroundings were 
delightful and beautiful. Elm wood, the square old frame 
house in which he was born and died, was built before the 
Revolution. A year before Lowell's birth, Elm wood was 
bought by his father, the Reverend Charles Lowell, of 
the West Congregational Church, Boston. The house 
is on Elmwood Avenue, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a 
mile from the Yard of Harvard College. In Lowell's day 
the house had a pleasant outlook from the front windows 
across farm land to the elms and spires of Cambridge. 
Near by was the winding Charles River. Only a few 
minutes away was Fresh Pond, and behind the house not 
many miles distant were the wooded hills and pastures 
of Arlington and Lexington. The young Lowell had only 
to look out of his windows and walk about the neighbor- 
hood to see scenes a poet might love to picture in language. 

9 



10 INTRODUCTION 

The life of the family was refined and cultured. The 
father was a graduate of Harvard College and had studied 
in England and Scotland. The mother, who was of Scotch 
descent, was fond of singing old ballads. An older sister 
was "Jemmy's" special companion. She speaks of her 
brother as having been very imaginative but remarkably 
kind and self-controlled. She was herself imaginative 
but high-strung. The first poetry that Lowell knew well 
was Spenser's Faerie Queene. So vivid was his imagina- 
tion that in his walks he used to conjure up from Spen- 
ser's poem mystic knightly figures that were more real 
to him than people he knew. He played under the elms 
and pines and loved the bluebird's call and the chattering 
orioles and the shrilling robins. 

A city boy or girl who never lived in the country could 
not easily understand such things as came easily to Lowell 
from his boyish outdoor life: 

"We sit in the warm shade and feel right well 

How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell; 

We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing 

That skies are clear and grass is growing; 

The breeze comes whispering in our ear 

That dandelions are blossoming near, 

That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, 

That the river is bluer than the sky, 

That the robin is plastering his house hard by." 

The city boy would hardly know what maize is, still 
less how it sprouts; and he never saw a robin making its 
nest. Hence such a boy will not get as much from The 
Vision of Sir Launfal at first reading as a boy bred in the 
country will get. But the city boy perhaps will under- 
stand Sir Launfal better than the country boy in one 
respect. The city boy will doubtless have thought more 
about equality of men and about plans for making ail 
men brothers — conceptions and projects with which 



INTRODUCTION 11 

Lowell became concerned in his association with city men 
as he grew older. 

Young Lowell liked to read. In fact, all his family 
were wide readers. When he was nine, he eagerly read 
the novels of Walter Scott, then just published and al- 
ready popular among boys and also grown people. 

During his years at Harvard from the age of fifteen to 
nineteen, he lived at home part of the time but had a room 
for study near the college. There were about two hun- 
dred young men at Harvard when Lowell was a student. 
The most interesting thing about his college course is 
not his study of the required Latin, Greek, and mathe- 
matics, but his reading of the English poets — Keats, 
Byron, Shelley, Tennyson, Cowper, Southey, Milton — 
and his writing of a satirical "Class Poem," copies of which 
were distributed among his friends and classmates. One 
of his college mates says that Lowell borrowed Tennyson's 
first small volume of verse from Emerson. 

After college, Lowell continued his reading of English, 
Greek, and Latin poets and dramatists, while he was 
studying law. He wanted to be an author but thought 
he would not be able to earn his living as an author and 
so he prepared himself to be a lawyer. He took his bache- 
lor's degree in law. At the same time he was forming for 
himself a theory of poetry. 

In the autumn of 1840 he became engaged to be married 
to Miss Maria White. Miss White was a poet, delicately 
beautiful. During four years their engagement continued, 
while Lowell was trying to find his life work and earn 
enough to warrant his being married. He practiced law, 
acted as a clerk in an office, edited a magazine, and made 
his start as an author. Meanwhile, he and Miss White 
wrote and published tolerably good verse. They associ- 
ated with an intellectually active group of young people 
called "The Band." The conversation with this group 
enlarged Lowell's range of interest in reading and gave him 



12 INTRODUCTION 

active sympathy with people of all races, an interest in 
temperance, women's suffrage, and the abolition of slavery. 

In speaking one day at this period of youthful enthu- 
siasm, he said that he never felt so clearly the spirit of 
God in and around him; the whole room seemed full of 
God. Note this as you read the Prelude to Part First 
of The Vision of Sir Launfal. 

His attempt to start a magazine, The Pioneer, failed, 
in spite of the fact that some of the contributors, in addi- 
tion to himself, were Hawthorne, Poe, Whittier, and Mrs-. 
Browning. One reason for the failure was that Lowell 
had to be absent from Boston for treatment by a New 
York oculist. He met in New York some of the foremost 
literary men of the time, who were then setting the fashion 
in literature. For instance, look up what a history of 
American literature says about N. P. Willis. Edgar 
Allan Poe was also one of Lowell's New York acquaint- 
ances. 

Two volumes of poems by Lowell, A Year's Life and 
Poems, (first series,) were published. A prose work, 
Conversations on Some of the Old Poets, was also published, 
touching upon Spenser, Keats, Chaucer, Donne, and 
other poets. 

On the day after Christmas, 1844, Lowell and Miss 
White were married. Then they went to Philadelphia, 
where Lowell wrote for the Pennsylvania Freeman and 
was hand in glove with a number of active workers for 
the abolition of slavery. He and his wife lived very simply, 
in a single room, third floor back, but both were well and 
happy. Lowell's income was small indeed. Yet he says 
he was ruddy and hearty, the picture of health. The 
writing for the Pennsylvania Freeman did not turn out 
to be altogether satisfactory to either Lowell or the pub- 
lishers, and la.te in the spring of 1845 Mr. and Mrs. Lowell 
returned to Cambridge and made their home at Elmwood. 
The life here also was simple and happy. Lowell looked 



INTRODUCTION 13 

after the chickens and helped with the work about the 
house. Longfellow speaks of calling on him in his attic 
study, the ceiling of which one could touch with one's 
hands. They had good talks together about the old 
poets and about the bold chanticleer that was the favorite 
in the flock of chickens. 

Lowell was so full of delight in his home life and in his 
wonderful baby that he did very little productive writing 
for a time. But the death of the daughter Blanche re- 
sulted in the publication of several sorrowful poems. His 
income was still small, but with frugal housekeeping, in 
which Mrs. Lowell was a real helpmate, the Lowells man- 
aged to get along comfortably enough. 

Then came the notable year of 1848, when Lowell pub- 
lished his second series of Poems, the Fable for Critics, the 
Biglow Papers, The Vision of Sir Launfal, and many 
articles in magazines and newspapers. His friends, 
Longfellow and Holmes, were especially pleased with 
the work done by their fellow poet this year. 

The volume of poems includes political verse such as 
"The Present Crisis," and poems of rare beauty giving 
expression to the love of nature, as "An Indian Summer 
Reverie." The Fable for Critics seems out of date now, but 
was liked by lovers of literature in Lowell's day because of 
its shrewd humor and keen characterization of fellow 
authors — Poe, Hawthorne, and others. John Ruskin in 
England wrote that Lowell in the Fable for Critics did him 
more good in his moments of dullness than anybody else 
and made him feel hopeful. 

The Biglow Papers helped to direct public opinion in the 
North against slavery. No one had previously used 
Yankee dialect so skillfully in driving home the need for 
the abolition of slavery. Quotations from tfiis volume 
were on everybody's lips for a decade or more. The satire 
was criticised favorably by both American and English 
authorities in literature. One writer said, "No speech, no 



14 INTRODUCTION 

plea, no appeal was comparable in popular effect with this 
pitiless tempest of fire and hail, in the form of wit, argu- 
ment, satire, knowledge, insight, learning, common sense, 
and patriotism. It was humor of the purest strain, but 
humor in deadly earnest." 

The reputation that Lowell gained through this literary 
work was far extended. In America he had become 
recognized as a leading voice among the interpreters of 
the American spirit, and in England there was a ready and 
even eager acceptance of work from his pen. 

Since we are here particularly interested in The Vision 
of Sir Launfal alone, it may be sufficient to follow only 
as far as the memorable year of 1848 the life and fortunes 
of the poet Lowell. Through this study there will have 
come clearly to the reader a sense of the imaginative fan- 
tasy that distinguished him, the real and vital knowledge 
that he had of nature and her moods, and the thorough 
training he had given himself in the art of poetic expression 
of the impressions the world of nature and thought made 
upon his sensitive spirit. 



LIFE OF LONGFELLOW, 1S07-1882 

In the same way in which many Englishmen get their 
history from Shakespeare's plays, many Americans learn 
theirs from Longfellow's poems. Americans' ideas of 
New England colonial life are, for example, largely ob- 
tained from Longfellow's Courtship of Miles Standish, 
rather than from the authentic old chronicles or the 
modern histories. As Shakespeare used the facts to suit 
himself, sp did Longfellow. Longfellow has been as much 
admired and praised in the United States as Shakespeare 
in England. 

Longfellow has for two generations been perhaps the 
most popular American poet. His poetry has been thus 



tNTRODUCTION 15 

extraordinarily popular because it appeals most to simple 
tastes that demand concreteness and sympathy in the 
literature which they praise; and yet it appeals also to 
the heart of the most cultured scholars. His life was so 
simple and his character was so amiable that every one 
who knew anything about him — and every one knew 
something about him — loved him as if he were a per- 
sonal friend. The simple, tranquil life of this represent- 
ative of the best American ideals of his age, as related in 
the authoritative biography, that by Samuel Longfellow 
published in 1891 in three volumes, is interesting in spite 
of its normal, not to say commonplace, happiness. For 
almost fifty years (from 1807 to 1854), Longfellow lived 
a scholar's life, and then for nearly thirty years (from 
1854 to 1882) , he lived as a poet and man of letters. His 
Courtship of Miles Standish was written and published 
during this second period of his life. 

In many schools, the twenty-seventh of February is 
known as Longfellow day, for that was the birthday of 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1807 at Portland, Maine. 
He was the son of a lawyer who could trace his ancestry 
back for more than a hundred and fifty years to an Ed- 
ward Longfellow, of Horsforth, England, through a line 
of sturdy and mostly prosperous colonists — blacksmiths, 
schoolmasters, judges. His mother's father was General 
Peleg Wadsworth, a Revolutionary soldier of distinction; 
his mother was a descendant of Priscilla Alden. Long- 
fellow was named after Henry, one of the brothers of his 
mother, and was given also the family name, Wadsworth. 
At General Wadsworth 's home, which was the first brick 
house built in Portland, and which is still standing (ad- 
mission twenty-five cents), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 
spent his boyhood. His delight in the childhood life in 
Portland is evident in his poem, "My Lost Youth." He 
had plenty of books to read in his father's library — the 
poems of Milton, Pope, Dryden, Cowper, Moore; Don 



16 INTRODUCTION 

Quixote and the successive numbers of Irving's Sketch" 
Book, which began to appear in 1819. He did not read, 
like Poe, the poems of Shelley, Keats, and Byron, the 
passionate romanticists of the early nineteenth century. 
At the private schools which he attended he is spoken of 
as a handsome schoolboy, thoughtful but not melan- 
choly; not averse to the quieter sports, but more fond oi 
a book under the trees. His home life was idyllic in its 
charm. At the age of thirteen the boy was made happy 
by seeing his first poem printed anonymously in the Port- 
land Gazette. 

When he was fifteen he entered Bowdoin College, at 
Brunswick, Maine. Probably the reason why he did not 
go to his father's college, Harvard, was that his father 
was a trustee of Bowdoin, which had been opened in 1802. 
At Bowdoin he knew Hawthorne and Franklin Pierce. 
His college life simply continued the training he had 
received at home and in the private schools. He studied 
faithfully the mathematics, natural sciences, and phi- 
losophy of the course. From his study of the classics and 
his reading in the college library he acquired a perspicu- 
ous but balanced English prose style. While at Bow- 
doin he wrote verses for the newspapers ; fourteen of these 
were published the year after his graduation in a volume 
entitled Miscellaneous Poems selected from the United 
States Literary Gazette. Of these the best known is " Hymn 
of the Moravian Nuns." He finished his course at the 
age of eighteen, and was asked to go abroad to prepare 
himself for a Bowdoin professorship of modern languages. 
His father allowed him six hundred cellars a year for a 
three years' stay in Europe. 

Thirsting for the springs of old culture, reverently alert 
for impressions of European life, the young American 
scholar took passage for Havre. His youthful enjoyment 
of all that he saw and felt is evident on every page of the 
notes which he published several years after his return. 



INTRODUCTION 17 

The extent of his travels is indicated by a sentence from 
the early part of his book : — 

" In this my pilgrimage, ' I have passed many lands and 
countries, and searched many full strange places.' I 
have traversed France from Normandy to Navarre; 
smoked my pipe in a Flemish inn; floated through Hol- 
land in a Trekschuit; trimmed my midnight lamp in a 
German university; wandered and mused amid the classic 
scenes of Italy ; and listened to the gay guitar and merry 
Castanet on the borders of the blue Guadalquivir." (From 
Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage beyond the Sea.) A character- 
istic passage showing how he relished his European travel 
is this: "My recollections of Spain are of the most 
lively and delightful kind. The character of the soil and 
of its inhabitants, — the stormy mountains and free 
spirits of the North, — the prodigal luxuriance and gay 
voluptuousness of the South, — the history and tradi- 
tions of the past, resembling more the fables of romance 
than the solemn chronicle of events, — a soft and yet 
majestic language that falls like martial music on the 
ear, and a literature rich in the attractive lore of poetry 
and fiction, — these, but not these alone, are my remi- 
niscences of Spain." 

On his return to the United States, he took up at Bow- 
doin the wearing work of teaching, yet he entered upon it 
with enthusiasm in the belief that it would allow him time 
to write as he might be inclined. Instead of doing orig- 
inal work, however, he made text-books, excellent of 
their kind and for their purpose. He edited French 
texts, translated a French grammar, and made French, 
Spanish, and Italian readers. His recitations and lec- 
tures he prepared for painstakingly. The students liked 
him ; he enjoyed them. His influence during bis six years 
of teaching at Bowdoin was of the best. Other colleges 
tried to secure his services, but he preferred Bowdoin until 
a call came to follow Ticknor in the chair of modern Ian- 



18 INTRODUCTION 

guages at Harvard. Longfellow accepted and went 
abroad for further study, particularly of German, which 
he never cared for so much as the French and Spanish 
and Italian languages and literatures; in these he had 
already become extremely proficient. His acceptance of 
the Harvard professorship took him in the autumn of 
1836 to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where, living for the 
remaining years of his life, he became a quiet but power- 
ful influence for widening culture, and where, having 
more time to' himself than at Bowdoin,-he became the 
chief of the "Cambridge Poets." During his Harvard 
teaching he published several volumes of prose and 
poetry: Hyperion, a Romance, 1839; Voices of the Night, 
1839, which contained translations and nine original 
poems; Ballads, and Other Poems, 1841; Poems on Sla- 
very, 1842; The Spanish Student, el three-act play, 1843; 
The Belfry of Bruges, and Other Poems, 1845; Evangeline, 
1847; Kavanagh, a Tale, 1849; The Seaside and the Fire- 
side, 1849; and The Golden Legend, 1851. In the year 
1854, he was succeeded at Harvard by his friend James 
Russell Lowell. 

Thus far no mention has been made of Longfellow's 
domestic affairs. In 1831, at the age of twenty-two, he 
was married to Mary Storer Potter, of Portland. With 
her, for four years, he lived a contented, peaceful life. 
Mrs. Longfellow was beautiful in appearance, happy in 
disposition, and sympathetic and appreciative in her 
husband's intellectual work. The shock of her death in 
Holland while he was studying in preparation for his 
Harvard professorship changed Longfellow from a youth 
in spirit to a grown man. At Cambridge he took rooms 
in the Craigie House. This fine old colonial building is 
now pointed out to every Cambridge visitor as the Long- 
fellow home, for here Longfellow lived the rest of his life, 
except for summers on the New England coast and several 
European journeys. In the hero of Hyperion he had 



INTRODUCTION 19 

sketched his own bitterness of thought during the year 
following the death of his first wife, and in the heroine he 
had sketched the character of Miss Frances Appleton, 
who became in July, 1843, his second wife. At their 
marriage, Miss Appleton's father bought for them the 
Craigie mansion. Here, for some years, their life was 
like the home life of the best New England families of 
the day — children at play, fireside reading, entertain- 
ments, calls, concerts, plays, enough work to keep the 
domestic delight from palling by monotony of idleness. 
In the year 1854 Longfellow and his wife decided that 
they could afford to live without his salary as professor, 
and he resigned. 

From 1854 till his death in 1882 Longfellow, relieved 
entirely from professional duties, did some of his best 
work as poet and man of letters. He continued to dream 
along in the peaceful existence already started at Cam- 
bridge, all the time growing in the affections of the people 
till the whole nation came to love him. Among the 
literary men of New England he was the dean. In the 
gatherings of the Saturday Club, which included Whittier, 
Emerson, Lowell, and Hawthorne among its members, 
Longfellow took particular joy. He was long a friend 
of Senator Charles Sumner. The young scholar Andrew 
D. White visited Longfellow in 1867 at his beautiful 
summer cottage at Nahant. In his Autobiography White 
speaks of Longfellow as "a most lovely being." As they 
sat on the veranda looking out over the ocean and dis- 
cussing political events, the poet turned to the young 
scholar and statesman and said, "Mr. White, don't you 
think Horace Greeley a very useless sort of man?" The 
dreamy poet could not understand at all the point of 
view of the practical man of affairs, the great editor of the 
New York Tribune. Four years later White dined with 
the poet at his Cambridge home. The host enjoyed 
showing the places in this house that were connected 



20 INTRODUCTION 

with interesting passages in the life of Washington when 
he occupied the house. These details given by Dr. White 
in his recollections afford a characteristic glimpse of the 
life of the celebrated Cambridge man of letters in this 
period of poetic ease. 

In that curious back-hand of his, not so legible and 
print-like as Poe's handwriting, Longfellow produced in 
this second period enough original poetry, translation, and 
editorial work to make a small library. In narrative 
poetry he published The Song of Hiawatha, 1855, consid- 
ered by many critics his greatest achievement because it 
is the nearest approach to an American epic. Narrative 
also is The Courtship of Miles Standish, published in 
1858. This seems to me his greatest poem because it 
dwells with consummate poetical art upon a world-appre- 
ciated theme and because it gives with absolute faithful- 
ness the spirit of the early New England Puritanism. 
Tales cf a Wayside Inn, 1863, is a popular collection of 
local pictures and old-world stories in pleasing verse. 
His most ambitious production was published in 1872 
under the heading Christus, a Mystery; it consisted of 
three parts, " The Divine Tragedy," " The Golden Legend," 
and "The New England Tragedies," and except for the 
second part, which had been already printed, is practi- 
cally unread among its author's works. His other prin- 
cipal volumes of poems are "Aftermath," "The Hanging 
of the Crane/' "Masque of Pandora," "Keramos," 
"Ultima Thule," and "In the Harbor." During this 
period he composed a group of sonnets which easily 
rank him as the chief American sonnet writer. The trans- 
lation of Dante's Divine Comedy, 1870, is the crowning 
achievement of the scholar, postponed till his time of 
ease. Though not in every respect a great translation 
of Dante's epic, it is true to the original and not lacking 
in Dante's poetic fire. Longfellow's editorial work in- 
cluded the editing of thirty-one volumes of Poems oj 



INTRODUCTION 21 

Places. Such was the extensive work of the man of letters 
in Cambridge, from 1854 to 1882, in original poetry, in 
translation, and in compilation. 

The life at Cambridge was not all happiness, for, eigh- 
teen years after his second marriage, his wife was burned 
so badly by the upturning of a candle on her dress that 
she soon died. Thereafter Longfellow lived in the Cam- 
bridge home with his children, the care and education of 
whom occupied his thoughts to the banishment of lone- 
liness. It was only when his distinguished friends died, 
one by one, that he began to feel the weight of his years. 
In March, 1882, he died, and was buried in Cambridge. 
The period of his life in Cambridge was, curiously enough, 
almost exactly the time of the supremacy of New England 
as a literary center. 

In the sketch of Longfellow's life, little mention has 
been made of specific short poems, such as " A Psalm of 
Life," "The Rainy Day " (written in the Portland home), 
"Excelsior," "The Wreck of the Hesperus," "The Build- 
ing of the Ship," "The Village Blacksmith," and "Paul 
Revere's Ride," which every schoolboy knows. It would 
have been superfluous to discuss these poems, for they 
have always appealed to the hearts of the American 
people and have done as much as the longer narrative 
poems to give their author his extraordinary popularity. 
But it was by such longer poems as The Courtship of 
Miles Standish that Longfellow established his claim to- 
a place among the poets of world-wide appeal, and it 
was by such writing that he merited recognition in West- 
minster Abbey, the temple of fame for the English-speak- 
ing nations. There, two years after his death, a bust of 
Longfellow was placed, with ceremonies which testified 
to the esteem in which he is held by all who speak the 
English language. 



22 INTRODUCTION 

LIFE OF WHITTIER, 1807-1892 

In The Appreciation of Literature, George E. Wood- 
berry speaks of Whittier 's Snow-Bound, Goldsmith's 
Deserted Village, and Burns 's The Cotter's Saturday Night 
as imperishable monuments to that "home-feeling which 
is so profound an element in the character as well as the 
affections of English-speaking people the world over." 
Inevitably popular are the poets who express this home- 
feeling. Next to Longfellow, Whittier has come closer 
to the heart of the nation than any other American poet. 
Known everywhere as the household Quaker poet, he 
is celebrated also as the poet who did more than any other 
to crystallize northern sentiment against slavery. These 
two phases of his work seem contradictory, but when his 
life is read in such an interesting and discriminating 
biography as that by George R. Carpenter in the American 
Men of Letters series, the contradiction is found to be 
apparent and not real, for Whittier was a poet appealing 
all the time to the best instincts of his nation. His life 
may best be considered in three periods: the first including 
his boyhood and early efforts at literature; the second, 
his freedom work; and the third, his life as a mature, 
tranquil poet. It was in this third period that he wrote 
his greatest poem, Snow-Bound. 

The house where he was born on December 17, 18Q7, 
is one mile to the northeast of Haverhill, Essex County, 
Massachusetts, near Great Pond, known also as Lake 
Kenoza. This farmhouse is the scene of Snow-Bound and 
is now marked by a bronze tablet. Whittier 's great-great- 
grandfather built the house about 1688; Whittiers had 
lived there ever since, all of them substantial pioneers and 
farmers of good repute, all of them husbands of farmers' 
daughters. The great-grandfather married a Quakeress, 
whose religion he adopted. The grandfather married 
Sarah Greenleaf. The poet was given the name of his 



INTRODUCTION 23 

father and the family name of his grandmother. John 
Greenleaf Whittier started in life with a hundred and 
fifty years of New England independent struggle for 
existence back of him. In his youth he continued the 
struggle, but with a weaker body and more sensitive 
temperament than his ancestors possessed. He worked 
on the ancestral farm, with intermissions of shoe-making 
and academy attendance and school-teaching, until he 
was twenty-one. When he was nearly nineteen his first 
printed poem appeared in the Newburyport Free Press. 
Whittier had been led early to the writing of poetry by 
his reading of Burns, Gray, Cowper, Scott, and Mrs. 
Hemans ; then when he was disappointed in love he read 
Byron. All of his own early poetry was imitative of 
the poets whom he had read. The Newburyport paper 
was edited by William Lloyd Garrison who subsequently 
became the great anti-slavery agitator and who influ- 
enced Whittier in this direction. In 1828 Whittier wrote 
to Garrison a letter commending his views on slavery, 
intemperance, and war. 

Through Garrison's recommendation, Whittier, then 
just of age, left the farm and became editor, at nine dollars 
a week, of The American Manufacturer, published in 
Boston. After seven months he was called home to 
Haverhill by the sickness of his father, who died the next 
year. During the interval Whittier worked the farm 
and edited the local paper. A month after his father's 
death he became editor of The New England Review, of 
Hartford, Connecticut. This position made him conver- 
sant with the political events of the time, brought him a 
wide friendship among editors, and a national reputation 
through the copying of his Hartford articles in other 
papers. In his leisure hours in Boston and Hartford 
"the gay young Quaker" read much in the best English 
fiction and poetry. His first book, Legends of New Eng- 
land, exhibiting a little of the weirdness later character- 



24 INTRODUCTION 

istic of Poe, was published in Hartford in 1831. Shortly 
after his return, in poor health, to Haverhill, he wrote to 
a friend that he had done with poetry and literature, and 
would now be a farmer. Yet he hankered for ah election 
to Congress and might perhaps have secured it, through 
the confidence his neighbors had in his shrewdness and 
the esteem in which they held him because of his Boston 
and Hartford editorships, had he not definitely allied 
himself in 1833 with the abolitionist movement. Thus 
far, from his youthful prose and poetry, he had gained a 
reputation in literature second to none of his contempo- 
raries, in spite of which nothing which he early wrote is 
at the present time much read. Now began the second 
period of his life. 

As a reformer, from 1833 to 1860, striving with Quaker 
intensity to uphold the principle of the equality of man, 
Whittier won the respect of the nation and the hootings 
of particular crowds. This was the time of his greatest 
effort in life ; in these years he accomplished what he con- 
sidered to be his most valuable service to his country. 
Not literature, but abolition, was his chief interest. Yet, 
.since slavery is no more, we are now concerned rather with 
Whittier 's literary life than with his life as a reformer 
and so must pass quickly over this second phase of his 
career. In June, 1833, influenced by the appeals of his 
friend Garrison to throw his influence into the cause of 
abolition, he published, at his own expense, a pamphlet 
entitled, "Justice and Expediency: or, Slavery Con- 
sidered with a View to Its Rightful and Effectual Remedy, 
Abolition. " This pamphlet illustrates Whittier's part in 
the abolition movement; he continued for more than 
twenty-five years to write essays and poems aiming to 
appeal to the reason and to bring about the abolition of 
slavery by public opinion as expressed by votes. He 
was one of the secretaries of the first national anti-slavery 
convention in Philadelphia and signed its declaration. In 



INTRODUCTION 25 

1835 he was a member of the Massachusetts legislature. 
In Concord, New Hampshire, he was mobbed in company 
with George Thompson, the English anti-slavery agitator. 
He kept Thompson, whose life was in danger, hidden 
for two weeks in the farmhouse. Soon after, during the 
rioting by a mob in Washington Street, Boston, Whittier 
was threatened with personal violence. A little later 
he was in New York for several months in the office of 
the American anti-slavery society, and almost became 
engaged to a young lady of Brooklyn. In 1838, when he 
was in Philadelphia editing the Pennsylvania Freeman, 
his office was sacked and burned by a mob, but he saved 
some of his belongings by disguising himself in a long 
white coat and a wig so that he could mingle with the mob 
without being known. He kept on editing the paper 
till his health failed. 

Then he took up his residence with his mother, aunt, 
and younger sister, Elizabeth, in Amesbury, eight miles 
from his birthplace, in a house which is now maintained 
as a memorial of the poet. Here his mother died in 1858. 
He edited at Lowell, Massachusetts, The Middlesex Stand- 
ard in 1844, and in 1847 became corresponding editor of 
The National Era, published at Washington. In 1849 he 
received five hundred dollars for the copyright of all his 
verse thus far published. Next year, he met James T. 
Fields, the friend of all the New England poets, and here- 
after his poems were published by Ticknor and Fields. 
In 1857 this firm brought out his collected poems. In 
spite of his numerous reform articles and poems, includ- 
ing the famous poem "Ichabod" and the volumes en- 
titled Voices of Freedom and Songs of Labor, in spite of 
his five prose volumes containing wonderfully keen essays 
analyzing and depicting early New England life and 
character, and in spite of a number of poems of national 
reputation, such as "The Barefoot Boy," "Skipper 
Ireson's Ride," and "Maud Muller," written from 1833 



26 INTRODUCTION 

to 1860, he would hardly be assured a permanent place 
among the best American poets, if he had not in the 
maturity of his years returned to the themes of his boy- 
hood and written one imperishable poem on the New 
England life as he knew it when he was a boy. 

Since Whittier was a reformer, with his soul on fire for 
the abolition of slavery, it might be thought that a fitting 
end to the second period of his life would be the end of the 
war rather than the beginning. But no! As a Quaker, 
Whittier had a' horror of war; he sympathized with the 
North, but he believed it would be better to let the 
South go rather than to fight. Thus he turned from his 
one absorbing great passion, his contention for freedom, to 
a tranquil life as a poet, a period of thirty-two years (from 
1860 to 1892), in no part of which because of ill health 
was he able to do a full day's work and in most of which 
he found it impossible to read or write for more than a 
half -hour at a time. In these years he grew steadily in 
the affections of the people. During the war his verses 
were cries of those who were bereaved and prayers for 
God to let the right be done. Some of his songs were 
sung by the northern soldiers, President Lincoln saying 
that he wanted the soldiers to hear such songs as Whit- 
tier's. His ballad of ''Barbara Frietchie" and his "Laus 
Deo " are his best known poems produced in war times. 

After the war he wrote a number of religious poems 
which appear in collections of hymns sung by various 
denominations. "I have been a member of the Society 
of Friends by birthright and by a settled conviction of 
the truth of its principles and the importance of its testi- 
monies, while, at the same time, I have a kind feeling 
towards all who are seeking, in different ways from mine, 
to serve God and benefit their fellow-men." Thus Whittier 
wrote regarding his religious faith. It was this breadth 
of sympathy that made his religious songs acceptable to 
all true worshipers. 



INTRODUCTION 27 

Snow-Bound, which he says he wrote to beguile the 
weariness of a sick-room, at once became one of the " best 
sellers" of the day. From the time of its publication in 
1866, the surprising profits from its sale made Whittier 
a well-to-do man. Among the other poems of this period 
are "The Maids of Attitash," "Among the Hills/' "Amy 
Wentworth," "My Playmate/' "The Henchman/' and 
"Sea Dream." But Snow-Bound is the poem on which 
Whittier 's fame as a poet most securely rests. 

After the death of his sister, in 1864, his brother's 
daughter, Elizabeth Whittier, kept house for him at 
Amesbury until her marriage in 1876 to S. T. Pickard, 
who became his biographer. Whittier continued to vote 
at Amesbury, but spent much of his time with his 
cousins, the Misses Johnson, at Oak Knoll, Dan vers, 
Massachusetts. At Amesbury, this kindly old bachelor, 
famous as he was, used to like to sit in the shop of the vil- 
lage tailor and talk with his neighbors. Occasionally he 
traveled to Boston to see his publishers and enjoy an 
evening with the Saturday Club, to which Longfellow 
also belonged. He spent his summers on Lake Winne- 
pesaukee or at the Isles of Shoals or at Amesbury. The 
life all the year was easier and quieter than in earlier 
days. He wrote when he felt inclined; he had an income 
more than sufficient for his simple needs. He had not 
many close friends, though numerous acquaintances, 
among the contemporary men of letters: Bayard Taylor, 
Holmes, Hawthorne, Emerson, Lowell, and Longfellow; 
the southern poet, Paul Hamilton Hayne, who was much 
attracted by his broad spirit ; the English writers, Dickens 
and Kingsley. Much of his time he spent in writing 
letters to gifted ladies — Lucy Larcom, Alice and Phoebe 
Cary, Celia Thaxter, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Sarah 
Orne Jewett, and Mrs. Fields. 

In 1877, when he was seventy years old, he was the 
guest of honor at a dinner given by the publishers of 



28 INTRODUCTION 

The Atlantic Monthly to distinguished contributors. Ten 
years later, on his eightieth birthday, he was congratu- 
lated at Oak Knoll by the governor of the state and a 
committee, for he was nearly the last of the great New 
England abolitionists and poets. In 1892 he died and was 
buried in the village cemetery at Amesbury, where the 
other members of his family had been buried before him. 
He was, as one of his biographers says, the last sur- 
vivor of the circle that gathered about the hearth in the 
snow-bound homestead. Such was his art in the unique 
and imperishable poem, Snow-Bound, that there is no 
family in the world whose members are so widely known 
among the people who speak the English tongue. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 

Prelude to Part First 

Over his keys the musing. organist, 1 

Beginning doubtfully and far away, 
First lets his fingers wander as they list, 

And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay; 
Then, as the touch of his loved instrument 

Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme, 
First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent 

Along the wavering vista of his dream. 

Not only around our infancy 2 
Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; 
Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, 
We Sinais 3 climb and know it not. 
Over our manhood bend the skies; 

Against our fallen and traitor lives 
The great winds utter prophecies; 

With our faint hearts the mountain strives; 
Its arms outstretched, the druid wood 4 
Waits with its benedicite; 
29 



30 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

And to our age's drowsy blood 
Still shouts the inspiring sea. 

Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us; 

The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, 
The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us, 

We bargain for the graves we lie in; 
At the Devil's booth are all things sold, 
Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold; 

For a cap and bells 1 our lives we pay, 
Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking; 

'T is heaven alone that is given away, 
'T is only God may be had for the asking; 
No price is set on the lavish summer; 
June may be had by the poorest comer. 

And what is so rare as a day in June? 

Then, if ever, come perfect days; 
Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, 

And over it softly her warm ear lays; 
Whether we look, or whether we listen, 
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; 
Every clod feels a stir of might, 

An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 
And, groping blindly above it for light, 

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 31 

The flush of life may well be seen 

Thrilling back over hills and valleys; 
The cowslip startles in meadows green, 1 

The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, 
And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean 

To be some happy creature's palace; 
The little bird sits at his door in the sun, 

Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 
And lets his illumined being o'errun 

With the deluge of summer it receives; 
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, 
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; 
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest, — 
In the nice 2 ear of Nature which song is the 

best? 

Now is the high-tide of the year, 

And whatever of life hath ebbed away 
Comes flooding back, with a ripply cheer, 

Into every bare inlet arid creek and bay; 
Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, 
We are happy now because God wills it; 
No matter how barren the past may have been, 
'T is enough for us now that the leaves are green; 
We sit in the warm shade and feel right well 
How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell; 



o2 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing 
That skies are clear and grass is growing; 
The breeze comes whispering in our ear 
That dandelions are blossoming near, 

That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, 
That the river is bluer than the sky, 
That the robin is -plastering his house hard by; 
And if the breeze kept the good news back, 
For other couriers * we should not lack; 

We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing, — 
And hark! how clear bold chanticleer, 
Warmed with the new wine of the year, 

Tells all in his lusty crowing! 

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how; 
Everything is happy now, 

Everything is upward striving; 
'T is as easy now for the heart to be true 
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue, — 

'T is the natural way of living. 
Who knows whither the clouds have fled? 

In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake; 
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, 

The heart forgets its sorrow and ache; 
The soul partakes of the season's youth, 

And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 33 

Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, 

Like burnt-out craters * healed with snow. 
What wonder if Sir Launfal now 
Remembered the keeping of his vow? 

Part First 
I 
"My golden spurs now bring to me, 

And bring to me my richest mail, 2 
For to-morrow I go over land and sea 

In search of the Holy Grail; 
Shall never a bed for me be spread, 
Nor shall a pillow be under my head, 
Till I begin my vow to keep ; 
Here on the rushes 3 will I sleep, 
And perchance there may come a vision true 
Ere day create the world anew." 

Slowly Sir Launfal' s eyes grew dim, 

Slumber fell like a cloud on him, 
And into his soul the vision flew. 

II 

The crows flapped over by twos and threes, 
In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their knees, 
The little birds sang as if it were 
The one day of summer in all the year, 



34 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees: 

The castle alone in the landscape lay 

Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray; 

'T was the proudest hall in the North Countree, * 

And never its gates might opened be, 

Save to lord or lady of high degree; 

Summer besieged it on eveiy side, 

But the churlish stone her assaults defied; 

She could not scale the chilly wall, 

Though around it for leagues her pavilions 2 tall 

Stretched left and right, 

Over the hills and out of sight; 

Green and broad was every tent, 

And out of each a murmur went 
Till the breeze fell off at night. 

Ill 

The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang, 
And through the dark arch a charger 3 sprang, 
Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden knight, 4 
In his gilded mail, that flamed so bright 
It seemed the dark castle had gathered all 
Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wall 

In his siege of three hundred summers 5 long, 
And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf, 

Had cast them forth: so, young and strong, 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 35 

And lightsome as a locust leaf, 1 

Sir Launfal flashed forth in his unscarred mail, 

To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail. 

IV 

It was morning on hill and stream and tree, 
And morning in the young knight's heart; 

Only the castle moodily 

Rebuffed the gifts of the sunshine free, 
And gloomed by itself apart; 

The season brimmed all other things up 

Full as the rain fills the pitcher-plant's cup. 

V 

As Sir Launfal made morn 2 through the darksome 
gate, 

He was 'ware 3 of a leper, crouched by the same, 
Who begged with his hand and moaned as he sate; 

And a loathing over Sir Launfal came; 
The sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill, 

The flesh 'neath his armor 'gan shrink and 
crawl, 
And midway its leap his heart stood still 

Like a frozen waterfall; 
For this man, so foul and bent of stature, 
Rasped harshly against his dainty nature. 



36 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

And seemed the one blot on the summer morn, — 
So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn. 

t 
VI 

The leper raised not the gold from the dust: 
''Better to me the poor man's crust, 
Better the blessing of the ppor, 
Though I turn me empty from his door; 
That is no true alms which the hand can hold; 
He gives nothing but worthless gold 

Who gives from a sense of duty; 
But he who gives but a slender mite, 
And gives to that which is out of sight, 

That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty 
Which runs through all and doth all unite, — 
The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms, 
The heart outstretches its eager palms, 
For a god goes with it and makes it store 
To the soul that was starving in darkness before." 



Prelude to Part Second 

Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak, 
From the snow five thousand summers old ; * 

On open wold and hill-top bleak 
It had gathered all the cold, 2 

And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek; 

It carried a shiver everywhere 

From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare; 

The little brook heard it and built a roof 

'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof; 

All night by the white stars' frosty gleams 

He groined his arches and matched his beams; 

Slender and clear were his crystal spars 

As the lashes of light that trim the stars; 

He sculptured every summer delight 

In his halls and chambers out of sight; 

Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt 

Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt, 

Long, sparking aisles of steel-stemmed trees 

Bending to counterfeit a breeze; 

Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew 

But silvery mosses that downward grew; 

37 



38 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief 

With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf; 1 

Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear 

For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and 

here 
He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops 
And hung them thickly with diamond-drops, 
That crystalled the beams of moon and sun, 
And made a star of every one. 
No mortal builder's 2 most rare device 
Could match this winter-palace of ice; 
'T was as if every image that mirrored lay 
In his depths serene through the summer day, 
Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky, 

Lest the happy model should be lost, 
Had been mimicked in fairy masonry 

By the elfin builders of the frost. 

Within the hall are song and laughter, 

The cheeks of Christmas 3 grow red and jolly, 

And sprouting is every corbel 4 and rafter 
With lightsome green of ivy and holly; 

Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide 

Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide; 

The broad flame-pennons droop 5 and flap 
And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 39 

Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, 
Hunted to death in its galleries blind; 

And swift little troops of silent sparks, 

Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear, 

Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks 
Like herds of startled deer. 

But the wind without was eager and sharp, 
Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp, 

And rattles and wrings 

The icy strings, 
Singing, in dreary monotone, 
A Christmas carol of its own, 
Whose burden still, as he might guess, 
Was — " Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!" 

The voice of the seneschal flared like a torch 
As he shouted the wanderer away from the porch, 
And he sat in the gateway and saw all night 
The great hall-fire, so cheery and bold, 
Through the window-slits of the castle old, 
Build out its piers of ruddy light 
Against the drift of the cold. 



40 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Part Second 

I 
There was never a leaf on bush or tree, 
The bare boughs rattled shudderingly; 
The river was dumb and could not speak, 

For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun; 
A single crow on the tree-top bleak 

From his shining feathers shed off the cold 
sun; 
Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold, 
As if her veins were sapless and old, 
And she rose up decrepitly 
For a last dim look at earth and sea. 

II 

Sir Launfal turned from his own hard gate, 

For another heir in his earldom sate; 

An old, bent man, worn out and frail, 

He came back from seeking the Holy Grail; 

Little he recked of his earldom's loss, 

No more on his surcoat was blazoned the 

cross, 1 
But deep in his soul the sign he wore, 
The badge of the suffering and the poor. 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 41 

III 

Sir Launfal's raiment thin and spare 

Was idle mail 'gainst the barbed air, 

For it was just at the Christmas time; 

So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime, 

And sought for a shelter from cold and snow 

In the light and warmth of long ago; 

He sees the snake-like caravan crawl 

O'er the edge of the desert, black and small, 

Then nearer and nearer, till, one by one, 

He can count the camels in the sun, 

As over the red-hot sands they pass 

To where, in its slender necklace of grass, 

The little spring laughed and leapt in the shade. 

And with its own self like an infant played, 

And waved its signal of palms. 

IV 

"For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms;" 
The happy camels may reach the spring, 
But Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome thing, 
The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone, 1 
That cowers beside hirn, a thing as lone 
And white as the ice-isles of Northern seas 
In the desolate horror of his disease. 



42 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

V 

And Sir Launfal said, — " I behold in thee 

An image of Him who died on the tree; 

Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns, 

Thou also hast had the world's buffets and scorns, — 

And to thy life were not denied 

The wounds in- the hands and feet and side : 

Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me; 

Behold, through him, I give to thee!" 

VI 

""V 

Then the soul of the leper stood up in his eyes 

And looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway he 
Remembered in what a haughtier guise 

He had flung an alms to leprosie, 
When he girt his young life up in gilded mail 
And set forth in search of the Holy Grail. 
The heart within him was ashes and dust; 
He parted in twain his single crust, 
He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink, 
And gave the leper to eat and drink; 
'T was a moldy crust of coarse brown bread, 

'T was water out of a wooden bowl, — 
Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed, 

And 't was red wine he drank with his thirsty 
soul. 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 43 

VII 

As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast face, 

A light shone round about the place; 

The leper no longer crouched at his side, 

But stood before him glorified, 

Shining and tall and fair and straight 

As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate l — 

Himself the Gate whereby men can 

Enter the temple of God in Man. 

VIII 

His words were shed softer than leaves from the 

pine, 
And they fell on Sir Launfal as snows on the brine, 
That mingle their softness and quiet in one 
With the shaggy unrest they float down upon; 
And the voice that was softer than silence said, 
"Lo, it is I, be not afraid! 
In many climes, without avail, 
Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail; 
Behold, it is here, — this cup which thou 
Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now; 
This crust is my body broken for thee, 
This water his' blood that died on the tree; 
The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, 
In whatso we share with another's need, — 



44 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Not what we give, but what we share, — 
For the gift without the giver is bare; 
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, — 
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me." 

IX 

Sir Launfal awoke as from a swound : — 
"The Grail in my castle here is found! 
Hang my idle armor up on the wall, 
Let it be the spider's banquet-hall; 
He must be fenced with stronger mail 
Who would seek and find the Holy Grail." 

X 

The castle gate stands open now, 

And the wanderer is welcome to the hall 

As the hangbird is to the elm-tree bough; 
No longer scowl the turrets tall, 

The Summer's long siege at last is o'er; 

When the first poor outcast went in at the 
door, 

She entered with him in disguise, 

And mastered the fortress by surprise; 

There is no spot she loves so well on ground, 

She lingers and smiles there the whole year round; 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 45 

\ 

The meanest serf on Sir LaunfaFs land 

Has hall and bower at his command; 

And there's no poor man in the North Countree 

But is lord of the earldom as much as he. 




HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 




HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 
I 

MILES STANDISH 

In the Old Colony days, 1 in Plymouth the land 
of the Pilgrims, 
To and fro in a rrom of his simple and primitive 

dwelling, 
Clad in doublet and hose, and boots of Cordovan 2 

leather, 
Strode, with martial air, Miles Standish 3 the Puritan 
Captain. 

47 



48 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Buried in thought he seemed, with his hands behind 

him, and pausing 
Ever and anon to behold his glittering weapons of 

warfare, 
Hanging in shining array along the walls of his 

chamber, — ■ 
Cutlass and corselet of steel, and his trusty sword of 

Damascus, 1 
Curved 2 at the point and inscribed with its mystical 

Arabic sentence, 
While underneath, in a corner, were fowling-piece, 

musket, and matchlock. 
Short of stature he was, but strongly built and ath- 
letic, 
Broad in the shoulders, deep-chested, with muscles 

and sinews of iron; 
Brown as a nut was his face, but his russet beard 

was already 
Flaked with patches of snow, as hedges sometimes 

in November. 
Near him was seated John Alden, 3 his friend and 

household companion, 
Writing with diligent speed at a table of pine by 

the window; 
Fair-haired, azure-eyed, with delicate Saxon com- 
plexion, 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 49 

Having the dew of his youth, and the beauty thereof, 

as the captives 
Whom Saint Gregory saw, and exclaimed, "Not 

Angles 1 but Angels." 
Youngest of all was he of the men who came in the 

Mayflower. 

Suddenly breaking the silence, the diligent scribe 2 

interrupting, 
Spake, in the pride of his heart, Miles Standish the 

Captain of Plymouth. 
" Look at these arms," he said, "the warlike weapons 

that hang here 
Burnished and bright and clean, as if for parade or 

inspection ! 
This is the sword of Damascus I fought with in 

Flanders; 3 this breastplate, — 
Well I remember the day! once saved my life in a 

skirmish; 
Here in front you can see the very dint of the bullet 
Fired point-blank at my heart by a Spanish arca- 

bucero. 4 
Had it not been of sheer steel, the forgotten bones 

of Miles Standish 
Would at this moment be mold, in their grave in 

the Flemish morasses." 



50 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Thereupon answered John Alden, but looked not 

up from his writing: 
"Truly the breath 1 of the Lord hath slackened the 

speed of the bullet; 
He in his mercy preserved you, to be our shield and 

our weapon!" 
Still the Captain continued, unheeding the words 

of the stripling : 
"See, how bright they are burnished, as if in an 

arsenal hanging; 
That is because I have done it myself, and not left 

it to others. 
Serve yourself, 2 would you be well served, is an 

excellent adage; 
So I take care of my arms, as you of your pens and 

your inkhorn. 
Then, too, there are my soldiers, my great, invin- 
cible army, 
Twelve men, all equipped, having each his rest 3 

and his matchlock, 
Eighteen shillings a month, together with diet and 

pillage, 
And, like Caesar, I know the name of each of my 

soldiers!" 
This he said with a smile, that danced in his eyes, 

as the sunbeams 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 51 

Dance on the waves of the sea, and vanish again in 

a moment. 
Alden laughed l as he wrote, and still the Captain 

continued : 
"Look! you can see from this window my brazen 

howitzer planted 
High on the roof of the church, a preacher 2 who 

speaks to the purpose, 
Steady, straightforward, and strong, with irresist- 
ible logic, 
Orthodox, flashing conviction right into the hearts 

of the heathen. 
Now we are ready, I think, for any assault of the 

Indians : 
Let them come if they like, and the sooner they try 

it the better, — 
Let them come if they like, be it sagamore, 3 sachem, 

or pow-wow, 
Aspinet, Samoset, Corbitant, Squanto, or Tokama- 

hamon!" 

Long at the window he stood, and wistfully gazed 

on the landscape, 
Washed with a cold gray mist, the vapory breath 

of the east wind, 
Forest 4 and meadow and hill, and the steel-blue 

rim of the ocean, 



52 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Lying silent and sad, in the afternoon shadows and 
sunshme. 

Over his countenance flitted a shadow like those on 
the landscape, 

Gloom intermingled with light; and his voice was 
subdued with emotion, 

Tenderness, pity, regret, as after a pause he pro- 
ceeded : 

"Yonder there, on the hill by the sea, lies buried 
Rose Stanclish; 

Beautiful rose of love, that bloomed for me by the 
wayside ! 

She was the first to die of all who came in the May- 
flower ! 

Green above her is growing the field of wheat we 
have sown there, 

Better to hide from the Indian scouts the graves of 
our people, 

Lest they should count them and see how many 
already have perished ! " 

Sadly his face he averted, and strode up and down, 
and was thoughtful. 

Fixed to the opposite wall was a shelf of books, 
and among them 
Prominent three, 1 distinguished alike for bulk and 
for binding; 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 53 

BarrifiVs Artillery Guide, 1 and the Commentaries 2 
of Caesar, 

Out of the Latin translated by Arthur Goldinge of 
London, 

And, as if guarded by these, between them was 
standing the Bible. 

Musing a moment before them, Miles Standish 
paused, as if doubtful 

Which of the three he should choose for his conso- 
lation and comfort, 

Whether the wars of the Hebrews, the famous cam- 
paigns of the Romans, 

Or the Artillery practice, designed for belligerent 
Christians. 

Finally down from its shelf he dragged the ponder- 
ous Roman, 

Seated himself at the window, and opened the book, 
and in silence 

Turned o'er the well-worn leaves, where thumb- 
marks thick 3 on the margin, 

Like the trample of feet, proclaimed the battle was 
hottest. 

Nothing was heard in the room but the hurrying 
pen of the stripling, 

Busily writing epistles important, to go by the 
Mayflower, 



54 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Ready to sail on the morrow, or next day at latest, 

God willing! 
Homeward bound 1 with the tidings of all that 

terrible winter, 
Letters written by Alden, and full of the name of 

Priscilla, . 
Full of the name and the fame of the Puritan 

maiden Priscilla! 

II 

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP 

Nothing was heard in the room but the hurrying 

pen of the stripling, 
Or an occasional sigh from the laboring heart of 

the Captain, 
Reading the marvelous words and achievements 

of Julius Caesar. 
After a while he exclaimed, as he smote with his 

hand, palm downwards, 
Heavily on the page: "A wonderful man was this 

Caesar! 
You are a writer, and I am a fighter, but here is a 

fellow 
Who could both write and fight, and in both was 

equally skillful !" 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 55 

Straightway answered and spake John Alden, the 

comely, the youthful: 
"Yes, he was equally skilled, as you say, with his 

pen and his weapons. 
Somewhere have I read, but where I forget, he could 

dictate 
Seven letters at once, at the same time writing his 

memoirs." 
"Truly," continued the Captain, not heeding or 

hearing the other, 
"Truly a wonderful man was this Caius Julius 

Caesar ! 
'Better be first/ 1 he said, 'in a little Iberian vil- 
lage, 
Than be second in Rome/ and I think he was right 

when he said it. 
Twice was he married before he was twenty, and 

many times after; 
Battles five hundred he fought, and a thousand 

cities he conquered; 
He, too, fought in Flanders, as he himself has 

recorded; 
Finally he was stabbed by his friend, the orator 

Brutus! 
Now, do you know what he did on a certain occa- 
sion in Flanders, 



56 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

When the rear guard of his army retreated, the 

front giving way too, 
And the immortal Twelfth Legion was crowded so 

closely together 
There was no room for their swords? Why, he 

seized a shield from a soldier, 
Put himself straight at the head of his troops, and 

commanded the captains, 
Calling on each by his name, to order forward the 

ensigns; 
Then to widen the ranks, and give more room for 

their weapons; 
So he won the day, the battle of something-or-other. 
That's what I always say; if you wish a thing to be 

well done, 
You must do it yourself, you must not leave it to 

others!" 

All was silent again; the Captain continued his 

reading. 
Nothing was heard l in the room but the hurrying 

pen of the stripling 
Writing epistles important to go next day by the 

Mayflower, 
Filled with the name and the fame of the Puritan 

maiden Priscilla; 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 57 

Every sentence began or closed with the name of 
Priscilla, 1 

Till the treacherous pen, to which he confided the 
secret, 

Strove to betray it by singing and shouting the 
name of Priscilla! 

Finally closing his book, with a bang of the ponder- 
ous cover, 

Sudden and loud as the sound of a soldier ground- 
ing his musket, 

Thus to the young man spake Miles Standish the 
Captain of Plymouth: 

" When you have finished your work, I have some- 
thing important to tell you. 

Be not, however, in haste; I can wait; I shall not be 
impatient ! " 

Straightway Alden replied, as he folded the last of 
his letters, 

Pushing his papers aside, and giving respectful 
attention : 

"Speak; for whenever you speak, I am always ready 
to listen, 

Always ready to hear whatever pertains to Miles 
Standish." 

Thereupon answered the Captain, embarrassed, and 
culling his phrases: 



58 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

u 'Tis not good for a man to be alone, say the Scrip- 
tures. 1 
This I have said before, and again and again I 

repeat it; 
Every hour in the day, I think, and feel it, and 

say it. 
Since Rose Standish died, my life has been weary 

and dreary; 
Sick at heart have I been, beyond the healing of 

friendship. 
Oft in my lonely hours have I thought of the maiden 

Priscilla. 
She is alone in the world; 2 her father and mother 

and brother 
Died in the winter together; I saw her going and 

coming, 
Now to the grave of the dead, and now to the bed 

of the dying, 
Patient, courageous, and strong, and said to my- 

. self, that if ever 
There were angels on earth, as there are angels in 

heaven, 
Two have I seen and known; and the angel whose 

name is Priscilla 
Holds in my desolate life the place which the other 

abandoned. 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 59 

Long have I cherished the thought, but never have 

dared to reveal it, 
Being a coward in this, though valiant enough for 

the most part. 
Go to the damsel Priscilla, the loveliest maiden of 

Plymouth, 
Say that a blunt old Captain, a man not of words 

but of actions, 
Offers his hand and his heart, the hand and heart of 

a soldier. 
Not in these words, you know, but this in short is 

my meaning; 
I am a maker of war, and not a maker of phrases. 
You, who are bred as a scholar, can say it in ele- 
gant language, 
Such as you read in your books of the pleadings 

and wooings of lovers, 
Such as you think best adapted to win the heart of 

a maiden." 

When he had spoken, John Alden, the fair-haired, 

taciturn l stripling, 
All aghast at his words, surprised, embarrassed, 

bewildered^ 
Trying to mask his dismay by treating the subject 

with lightness, 



60 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Trying to smile, and yet feeling his heart stand 

still in his bosom, 
Just as a timepiece ' stops in a house that is stricken 

by lightning, 
Thus made answer and spake, or rather stammered 

than answered: 
" Such a message as that, I am sure I should mangle 

and mar it; 
If you would have it well done, — I am only repeat- 
ing your maxim, 2 — 
You must do it yourself, you must not leave it to 

others!" 
But with the air of a man whom nothing can turn 

from his purpose, 
Gravely shaking his head, made answer the Captain 

of Plymouth: 
"Truly the maxim is good, and I do not mean to 

gainsay it; 
But we must use it discreetly, and not waste powder 

for nothing. 
Now, as I said before, I was never a maker of 

phrases. 
I can march up to a fortress and summon the place 

to surrender, 
But march up to a woman with such a proposal, I 

dare not. 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 61 

I'm not afraid of bullets, nor shot from the mouth 

of a cannon, 
But of a thundering 'No!' point-blank from the 

mouth of a woman, 
That, I confess, I'm afraid of, nor am I ashamed to 

confess it ! 
So you must grant my request, for you are an ele- 
gant scholar, 
Having the graces of speech, and skill in the turning 

of phrases." 
Taking the hand of his friend, who still was reluc- 
tant and doubtful, 
Holding it long in his own, and pressing it kindly, 

he added: 
"Though I have spoken thus lightly, yet deep is 

the feeling that prompts me; 
Surely you cannot refuse what I ask in the name of 

our friendship ! " 
Then made answer John Alden: "The name of 

friendship is sacred; 
What you demand in that name, I have not the 

power to deny you ! " 
So the strong will prevailed, subduing and molding 

the gentler, 
Friendship prevailed over love, and Alden went on 

his errand. 



62 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

III 

THE LOVER'S ERRAND 

So the strong will prevailed/ and Alden went on 
his errand, 

Out of the street of the village, and into the paths 
of the forest, 

Into the tranquil woods, where bluebirds and robins 
were building 

Towns in the populous trees, with hanging gardens 2 
of verdure, 

Peaceful, aerial cities of joy and affection and free- 
dom. 

All around him was calm, but within him commo- 
tion and conflict, 

Love contending with friendship, and self with 
each generous impulse. 

To and fro in his breast his thoughts were heaving 
and dashing, 

As in a foundering ship, with every roll of the vessel, 

Washes the bitter sea, the merciless surge of the 
ocean! 

"Must I relinquish it all," he cried with a wild 
lamentation, — 

"Must I relinquish it all, the joy, the hope, the 
illusion? 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 63 

Was it for this I have loved, and waited, and wor- 
shiped in silence? 
Was it for this I have followed the flying feet x and 

the shadow 
Over the wintry sea, to the desolate shores of New 

England? 
Truly the heart is deceitful, and out of its depths 

of corruption 
Rise, like an exhalation, the misty phantoms of 

passion; 
Angels of light they seem, but are only delusions 

of Satan. 
All is clear to me now; I feel it, I see it distinctly! 
This is the hand of the Lord; it is laid upon me in 

anger, 
Fdr I have followed too much the heart's desires 

and devices, 
Worshiping Astaroth blindly, and impious idols of 

Baal. 2 
This is the cross I must bear; the sin and the swift 

retribution." 

So through the Plymouth woods John Alden 
went on his errand; 
Crossing the brook at the ford, where it brawled 
over pebble and shallow, 



64 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Gathering still, as he went, the mayflowers bloom- 
ing around him, 

Fragrant, filling the air with a strange and wonder- 
ful sweetness, 

Children 1 lost in the woods, and covered with 
leaves in their slumber. 

"Puritan flowers," he said, "and the type of Puri- 
tan maidens, 

Modest and simple and sweet, the very type of 
Priscilla ! 

So I will take them to her; to Priscilla the may- 
flower of Plymouth, 

Modest and simple and sweet, as a parting gift will 
I take them; 

Breathing their silent farewells, as they fade and 
wither and perish, 

Soon to be thrown away as is the heart of the 
giver." 

So through the Plymouth woods John Alden went 
on his errand; 

Came to an open space, and saw the disk of the 
ocean, 

Sailless, somber and cold with the comfortless 
breath of the east wind; 

Saw the new-built house, and people at work in a 
meadow; 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 65 

Heard, as he drew near the door, the musical voice 
of Priscilla 

Singing the hundredth Psalm, the grand old Puri- 
tan anthem, 

Music that Luther sang to the sacred words of the 
Psalmist, 

Full of the breath of the Lord, consoling and com- 
forting many. 

Then, as he opened the door, he beheld the form 
of the maiden 

Seated beside her wheel, and the carded wool ! like 
a snowdrift 

Piled at her knee, her white hands feeding the 
ravenous spindle, 

While with her foot on the treadle she guided th^ 
wheel in its motion. 

Open wide on her lap lay the well-worn psalm- 
book of Ainsworth, 

Printed in Amsterdam, the words and the music 
together, 

Rough-hewn, angular notes, like stones in the wall 
of a churchyard, 

Darkened and overhung by the running vine of the 
verses. 

Such was the book from whose pages she sang the 
old Puritan anthem, 2 

8he, the Puritan girl, in the solitude of the forest. 



66 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Making the humble house and the modest apparel 

of homespun 
Beautiful with her beauty, and rich with the wealth 

of her being! 
Over him rushed, like a wind that is keen and cold 

and relentless, 
Thoughts of what might have been, and the weight 

and woe of his errand; 
All the dreams that had faded, and all the hopes 

that had vanished, 
All his life * henceforth a dreary and tenantless 

mansion, 
Haunted by vain regrets, and pallid, sorrowful 

faces. 
Still he said to himself, and almost fiercely he said it, 
" Let not him that putteth his hand to the plow 2 

look backwards; 
Though the plowshare cut through the flowers of 

life to its fountains, 
Though it pass o'er the graves of the dead and the 

hearths of the living, 
It is the will of the Lord; and his mercy endureth 

forever!" 8 

So he entered the house; and the hufla of the 

wheel and the singing 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 67 

Suddenly ceased; for Priscilla, aroused by his step 

on the threshold, 
Rose as he entered, and gave him her hand, in 

signal of welcome, 
Saying, "I knew it was you, when I heard your 

step in the passage; 
For I was thinking of you, as I sat there singing 

and spinning." 
Awkward and dumb with delight, that a thought 

of him had been mingled 
Thus in the sacred psalm, that came from the heart 

of the maiden, 
Silent before her he stood, and gave her the flowers 

for an answer, 
Finding no words for his thought. He remem- 
bered that day in the winter, 
After the first great snow, when he broke a patk 

from the village, 
Reeling and plunging along through the drifts that 

encumbered the doorway, 
Stamping the snow from his feet as he entered the 

house, and Priscilla 
Laughed at his snowy locks, and gave him a seat 

by the fireside, 
Grateful and pleased to know he had thought of 

her in the snow-storm. 



68 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Had he but spoken then perhaps not in vain had 

he spoken! 
Now it was all too late; the golden moment had 

vanished ! ' 

So he stood there abashed, and gave her the flowers 

for an answer. 

Then they sat down and talked of the birds and 

the beautiful springtime; 
Talked of their friends at home, and the Mayflower 

that sailed on the morrow. 
"I have been thinking all day," said gently the 

Puritan maiden, 
"Dreaming all night, and thinking all day, of the 

hedgerows of England, — 
They are in blossom now, and the country is all 

like a garden; 
Thinking of lanes and fields, and the song of the 

lark and the linnet, 
Seeing the village street, and familiar faces of 

neighbors 
Going about as of old, and stopping to gossip to- 
gether, 
And, at the end of the street, the village church, 

with the ivy 
Climbing the old gray tower, and the quiet graves 

in the churchyard. 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 69 

Kind are the people I live with, and dear to me my 

religion ; 
Still my heart is so sad, that I wish myself back in 

Old England. 
You will say it is wrong, but I cannot help it: I 

almost 
Wish myself back in Old England, I feel so lonely 

and wretched." 

Thereupon answered the youth: "Indeed I do 

not condemn you; 
Stouter hearts than a woman's have quailed in 

this terrible winter. 
Yours is tender and trusting, and needs a stronger 

to lean on; 
So I have come to you now, with an offer and 

proffer of marriage 
Made by a good man and true, Miles Standish the 

Captain of Plymouth!" 

Thus he delivered his message, the dexterous 
writer of letters, — 

Did not embellish the theme, nor array it in beauti- 
ful phrases, 

But came straight to the point, and blurted it out 
like a schoolboy; 



70 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Even the Captain himself could hardly have said 

it more bluntly. 
Mute with amazement and sorrow, Priscilla the 

Puritan maiden 
Looked into Alden's face, her eyes dilated with 

wonder, 
Feeling his words like a blow, that stunned her and 

rendered her speechless; 
Till at length she exclaimed, interrupting the 

ominous silence: 
" If the great Captain of Plymouth is so very eager 

to wed me, 
Why does he not come himself, and take the trouble 

to woo me? 
If I am not worth the wooing, I surely am not 

worth the winning ! " 
Then John Alden began explaining and smoothing 

the matter, 
Making it worse as he went, by saying the Captain 

was busy, — 
Had no time for such things; — such things! the 

words grating harshly 
Fell on the ear of Priscilla; and swift as a flash she 

made answer: 
"Has he no time for such things, as you call it, 

before he is married, 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 71 

Would he be likely to find it, or make it, after the 

wedding? 
That is the way with you men; you don't understand 

us, you cannot. 
When you have made up your minds, after think- 
ing of this one and that one, 
Choosing, selecting, rejecting, comparing one with 

another, 
Then you make known your desire, with abrupt 

and sudden avowal, 
And are offended and hurt, and indignant perhaps, 

that a woman 
Does not respond at once to a love that she never 

suspected, 
Does not attain at a bound to the height to which 

you have been climbing. 
This is not right nor just; for surely a woman's 

affection 
Is not a thing to be asked for, and had for only the 

asking. 
When one is truly in love, one not only says it, 

but shows it. 
Had he but waited a while, had he only showed 

that he loved me, 
Even this Captain of yours — who knows? — at 

last might have won me, 



72 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Old and rough as he is; but now it never can happen." 

Still John Alden went on, unheeding the words 
of Priscilla, 

Urging the suit of his friend, explaining, persuad- 
ing, expanding; 

Spoke of his courage and skill, and of all his battles 
in Flanders, 

How with the people of God he had chosen to suffer 
affliction, 

How, in return for his zeal, they had made him 
Captain of Plymouth; 

He was a gentleman born, could trace his pedigree 
plainly 

Back to Hugh Standish l of Duxbury Hall, in Lan- 
cashire, England, 

Who was the son of Ralph, and the grandson of 
Thurston de Standish; 

Heir unto vast estates, of which he was basely 
defrauded, 

Still bore the family arms, 2 and had for his crest a 
cock argent 

Combed and wattled gules, and all the rest of the 
blazon. 

He was a man of honor, of noble and generous 
nature; 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 73 

Though he was rough, he was kindly; she knew 

how during the winter 
He had attended the sick, with a hand as gentle 

as woman's; 
Somewhat hasty and hot, he could not deny it, 

and headstrong, 
Stern as a soldier might be, but hearty, and placable 

always, 
Not to be laughed at and scorned, because he was 

little of stature; 
For he was great of heart, magnanimous, courtly, 

courageous; 
Any woman in Plymouth, nay, any woman in 

England, 
Might be happy and proud to be called the wife of 

Miles Standish! 

But as he warmed and glowed, in his simple 
and eloquent language, 

Quite forgetful of self, and full of the praise of his 
rival, 

Archly the maiden smiled, and, with eyes over- 
running with laughter, 

Said, in a tremulous voice, " Why don't you speak 
for yourself, John?" * 



74 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

IV 

JOHN ALDEN 

Into the open air John Alden, 1 perplexed and be- 
wildered, 

Rushed like a man insane, and wandered alone by 
the seaside; 

Paced up and down the sands, and bared his head 
to the east wind, 

Cooling his heated brow, and the fire and fever 
within him. 

Slowly, as out of the heavens, with apocalyptical 
splendors, 2 

Sank the City of God, in the vision of John the 
Apostle; 

So, with its cloudy walls of chrysolite, jasper, and 
sapphire, 

Sank the broad red sun, and over its turrets up- 
lifted 

Glimmered the golden reed of the angel who meas- 
ured the city. 

"Welcome, O wind of the East!" he exclaimed 
in his wild exultation, 
"Welcome, O wind of the East, from the caves of 
the misty Atlantic! 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 75 

Blowing o'er fields of dulse, 1 and measureless 

meadows of seagrass, 
Blowing o'er rocky wastes, and the grottoes and 

gardens of ocean ! 
Lay thy cold, moist hand on my burning forehead, 

and wrap me 
Close in thy garments of mist, to allay the fever 

within me!" 

Like an awakened conscience, the sea was moan- 
ing and tossing, 

Beating remorseful and loud the mutable sands of 
the seashore. 

Fierce in his soul was the struggle and tumult of 
passions contending; 

Love triumphant and crowned, and friendship 
wounded and bleeding, 

Passionate cries of desire, and importunate plead- 
ings of duty! 

"Is it my fault," he said, "that the maiden has 
chosen between us? 

Is it my fault that he failed, — my fault that I am 
the victor? " 

Then within him there thundered a voice, like the 
voice of the Prophet: 

"It hath displeased the Lord!" — and he thought 
of David's transgression, 2 



76 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Bathsheba's beautiful face, and his friend in the 
front of the battle ! 

Shame and confusion of guilt, and abasement and 
self-condemnation, 

Overwhelmed him at once; and he cried in the 
deepest contrition: 

"It hath displeased the Lord! It is the tempta- 
tion of Satan ! " 

Then, uplifting his head, he looked at the sea, 

and beheld there 
Dimly the shadowy form of the Mayflower riding 

at anchor, 
Rocked on the rising tide, and ready to sail on the 

morrow; 
Heard the voices of men through the mist, the rattle 

of cordage 
Thrown on the deck, the shouts of the mate, and 

the sailors' " Aye, aye, sir ! " 
Clear and distinct, but not loud, in the dripping 

air of the twilight. 
Still for a moment he stood, and listened, and 

stared at the vessel, 
Then went hurriedly on, as one who, seeing a phan- 
tom, 
Stops, then quickens his pace, and follows the 

beckoning shadow. 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 7? 

"Yes, it is plain to me now," he murmured; "the 

hand of the Lord is 
Leading me out of the land of darkness, the bond- 
age of error, 
Through the sea, that shall lift the walls of its 

waters 1 around me, 
Hiding me, cutting me off, from the cruel thought? 

that pursue me. 
Back will I go o'er the ocean, this dreary land will 

abandon, 
Her 2 whom I may not love, and him whom my heart 

has offended. 
Better to be in my grave in the green old church- 
yard in England, 
Close by my mother's side, and among the dust 

of my kindred; 
Better be dead and forgotten, than living in shame 

and dishonor! 
Sacred and safe and unseen, in the dark of the 

narrow chamber 
With me my secret shall lie, like a buried jewel 

that glimmers 
Bright on the hand that is dust, in the chambers 

of silence and darkness, — 
Yes, as the marriage ring of the great espousal 

hereafter ! " 



78 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Thus as he spake, he turned, in the strength of 
his strong resolution, 

Leaving behind him the shore, and hurried along 
in the twilight, 

Through the congenial gloom of the forest silent 
and somber, 

Till he beheld the lights on the seven houses f of 
Plymouth, 

Shining like seven stars in the dusk and mist of 
the evening. 

Soon he entered his door, and found the redoubt- 
able Captain 

Sitting alone, and absorbed in the martial pages 
of Caesar, 

Fighting some great campaign in Hainault or Bra- 
bant 2 or Flanders. 

" Long have you been on your errand," he said with 
a cheery demeanor, 

Even as one who is waiting an answer, and fears 
not the issue. 

"Not far off is the house, although the woods are 
between us; 

But you have lingered so long, that while you 
were going and coming 

I have fought ten battles and sacked and demol- 
ished a city. 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 79 

Come, sit down, and in order relate to me all that 
has happened." 

Then John Alden spake, and related the won- 
drous adventure 

From beginning to end, minutely, just as it happened; 

How he had seen Priscilla, and how he, had sped l 
in his courtship, 

Only smoothing a little, and softening down her 
refusal, 

But when he came at length to the words Priscilla 
had spoken, 

Words so tender and cruel: "Why don't you speak 
for yourself, John?" 

Up leaped the Captain of Plymouth, and stamped 
on the floor, till his armor 

Clanged on the wall, where it hung, with a sound 
of sinister omen. 

All his pent-up wrath burst forth in a sudden ex- 
plosion, 

E'en as a hand-grenade, that scatters destruction 
around it. 

Wildly he shouted, and loud: "John Alden! you 
have betrayed me! 

Me, Miles Standish, your friend! have supplanted, 
defrauded, betrayed me! 



80 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

One of my ancestors ran his sword through the 

heart of Wat Tyler; x 
Who shall prevent me from running my own through 

the heart of a traitor? 
Yours is the greater treason, for yours is a treason 

to friendship! 
You, who lived under my roof, whom I cherished 

and loved as a brother; 
You, who have fed at my board, and drunk at my 

cup, to whose keeping 
I have intrusted my honor, my thoughts the most 

sacred and secret, — - 
You too, Brutus! 2 ah, woe to the name of friendship 

hereafter ! 
Brutus was Caesar's friend, and you were mine, but 

henceforward 
Let there be nothing between us save war, and im- 
placable hatred ! " 

So spake the Captain of Plymouth, and strode 

about in the chamber, 
Chafing and choking with rage; like cords were the 

veins on his temples. 
But in the midst of his anger a man appeared at 

the doorway, 
Bringing in uttermost haste a message of urgent 

importance. 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 81 

Rumors of danger and war and hostile incursions 

of Indians! 
Straightway the Captain paused, and, without 

further question or parley, 
Took from the nail on the wall his sword with its 

scabbard of iron, 
Buckled the belt round his waist, and, frowning 

fiercely, departed. 
Alden was left alone. 1 He heard the clank of the 

scabbard 
Growing fainter and fainter, and dying away in 

the distance. 
Then he arose from his seat, and looked forth into 

the darkness, 
Felt the cool air blow on his cheek, that was hot 

with the insult, 
Lifted his eyes to the heavens, and, folding his 

hands as in childhood, 
Prayed in the silence of night to the Father who 

seeth in secret. 2 

Meanwhile the choleric Captain strode wrathful 
away to the council, 

Found it already assembled, impatiently waiting 
his coming; 

Men in the middle of life, austere and grave in de- 
portment, 



82 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Only one of them old, the hill * that was nearest 

to heaven, 
Covered with snow, but erect, the excellent Elder 

of Plymouth. 
God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat 

for this planting, 
Then had sifted the wheat, as the living seed of a 

nation; 
So say the chronicles old, 2 and such is the faith of 

the people! 
Near them was standing an Indian, in attitude 

stern and defiant, 
Naked down to the waist, and grim and ferocious 

in aspect; 
While on the table before them was lying unopened 

a Bible, 
Ponderous, bound in leather, brass-studded, printed 

in Holland, 
And beside it outstretched the skin 3 of a rattle- 
snake glittered, 
Filled, like a quiver, with arrows: a, signal and 

challenge of warfare, 
Brought by the Indian, and speaking with arrowy 

tongues of defiance. 
This Miles Standish beheld, as he entered, and 

heard them debating 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH S3 

What were an answer befitting the hostile message 

and menace, 
Talking of this and of that, contriving, suggesting, 

objecting; 
One voice only for peace, and that the voice of the 

Elder, 1 
Judging it wise and well that some at least were 

converted, 
Rather than any were slain, for this was but Chris- 
tian behavior! 
Then out spake Miles Standish, the stalwart Cap- 
tain of Plymouth, 
Muttering deep in his throat, for his voice was husky 

with anger, 
" What ! do you mean to make war with milk and 

the water of roses? 
Is it to shoot red squirrels you have your howitzer 

planted 
There on the roof of the church, or is it to shoot 

red devils? 
Truly the only tongue that is understood by a 

savage 
Must be the tongue of fire that speaks from the 

mouth of the cannon ! " 
Thereupon answered and said the excellent Elder 

of Plymouth, 



84 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Somewhat amazed and alarmed at this irreverent 

language : 
" Not so thought Saint Paul, nor yet the other 

Apostles; 
Not from the cannon's mouth were the tongues of 

fire they spake with ! " 
But unheeded fell this mild rebuke on the Captain, 
Who had advanced to the table, and thus con- 
tinued discoursing: 
"Leave this matter to me, for to me by right it 

pertaineth. 
War is a terrible trade; but in the cause that is 

righteous, 
Sweet is the smell of powder; and thus I answer the 

challenge ! " 

Then from the rattlesnake's skin, with a sudden, 

contemptuous gesture. 
Jerking the Indian arrows, he filled it with powder 

and bullets 
Full to the very jaws, and handed it back to the 

savage, 
Saying, in thundering tones: "Here, take it! this 

is your answer ! " 
Silently out of the room then glided the glistening 

savage, 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 85 

Bearing the serpent's skin, and seeming himself 

like a serpent, 
Winding his sinuous way in the dark to the depths 

of the forest. 



THE SAILING OF THE MAYFLOWER 

Just in the gray of the dawn, as the mists uprose 
from the meadows, 

There was a stir and a sound * in the slumbering 
village of Plymouth; 

Clanging and clicking of arms, and the order imper- 
ative, "Forward!" 

Given in tone suppressed, a tramp of feet, and then 
silence. 

Figures ten, in the mist, marched slowly out of the 
village. 

Standish the stalwart it was, with eight of his valor- 
ous army, 

Led by their Indian guide, by Hobomok, friend of 
the white men, 

Northward marching to quell the sudden revolt of 
the savage. 

Giants they seemed in the mist, or the mighty men 
of King David; 2 



86 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Giants in heart they were, who believed in God 

and the Bible, — 
Aye, who believed in the smiting of Midianites and 

Philistines. 
Over them gleamed far off the crimson banners of 

morning; 
Under them loud on the sands, the serried 1 billows, 

advancing, 
Fired along the line, and in regular order retreated. 

Many a mile had they marched, when at length 

the village of Plymouth 
Woke from its sleep, and arose, intent on its mani- 

. fold labors. 
Sweet was the air and soft; and slowly the smoke 

from the chimneys 
Rose over roofs of thatch, and pointed steadily 

eastward ; 
Men came forth from the doors, and paused and 

talked of the weather, 
Said that the wind had changed, and was blowing 

fair for the Mayflower; 
Talked of their Captain's departure, and all the 

dangers that menaced, 
He being gone, the town, and what should be done 

in his absence. 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILE& STANDISH 87 

Merrily sang the birds, and the tender voices of 

women 
Consecrated with hymns the common cares of the 

household. 
Out of the sea rose the sun, and the billows re- 
joiced at his coming; 
Beautiful were his feet ! on the purple tops of the 

mountains; 
Beautiful on the sails of the Mayflower riding at 

anchor, 
Battered and blackened and worn by all the storms 

of the winter. 
Loosely against her masts was hanging and flap- 
ping her canvas, 
Rent by so many gales, and patched by the hands 

of the sailors. 
Suddenly from her side, as the sun rose over the 

ocean, 
Darted a puff of smoke, and floated seaward; anon 

rang 
Loud over field and forest the cannon's roar, and 

the echoes 
Heard and repeated the sound, the signal-gun of 

departure ! 
Ah! but with louder echoes replied the hearts of 

the people! 



88 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Meekly, in voices subdued, the chapter was read 

from the Bible, 
Meekly the prayer was begun, but ended in fervent 

entreaty ! 
Then from their houses in haste came forth the 

Pilgrims of Plymouth, 
Men and women' and children, all hurrying down 

to the seashore, 
Eager, with tearful eyes, to say farewell to the 

Mayflower, 
Homeward bound o'er the sea, and leaving them 

here in the desert. 1 

Foremost among them was Alden. All night he 

had lain without slumber, 
Turning and tossing about in the heat and unrest 

of his fever. 
He had beheld Miles Standish, who came back late 

from the council, 
Stalking into the room, and heard him mutter and 

murmur, 
Sometimes it seemed a prayer, and sometimes it 

sounded like swearing. 
Once he had come to the bed, and stood there a 

moment in silence; 
Then he had turned away, and said: "I will not 

awake him: 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 89 

Let him sleep on, it is best; for what is the use of 

more talking!" 
Then he extinguished the light, and threw himself 

down on his pallet, 
Dressed as he was, and ready to start at the break 

of the morning, — 
Covered himself with the cloak he had worn in his 

campaigns in Flanders, — 
Slept as a soldier sleeps in his bivouac, ready for 

action. 
But with the dawn he arose; in the twilight Alden 

beheld him 
Put on his corselet of steel, and all the rest of his 

armor, 
Buckle about his waist his trusty blade of Da- 
mascus, 
Take from the corner his musket, and so stride out 

of the chamber. 
Often the heart of the youth had burned and yearned 

to embrace him, 
Often his lips had essayed to speak, imploring for 

pardon ; 
All the old friendship came back with its tender and 

grateful emotions; 
But his pride overmastered the nobler nature within 

him, — 



90 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Pride, and the sense of his wrong, and the burning 

fire of the insult. 
So he beheld his friend departing in anger, but 

spake not, 
Saw him go forth to danger, perhaps to death, and 

he spake 1 not ! 
Then he arose from his bed, and heard what the 

people were saying, 
Joined in the talk at the door, with Stephen and 

Richard and Gilbert, 2 
Joined in the morning prayer, and in the reading 

of Scripture, 
And, with the others, in haste went hurrying down 

to the seashore, 
Down to the Plymouth Rock, 3 that had been to 

their feet as a doorstep 
Into a world unknown, — the corner stone of a nation ! 

There with his boat was the Master, 4 already a 

little impatient 
Lest he should lose the tide, or the wind might 

shift to the eastward, 
Square-built, hearty, and strong, with an odor of 

ocean about him, 
Speaking with this one and that, and cramming 

letters and parcels 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 91 

Into his pockets capacious, and messages mingled 

together 
Into his narrow brain, till at last he was wholly 

bewildered. 
Nearer the boat stood Alden, with one foot placed 

on the gunwale, 1 
One still firm on the rock, and talking at times with 

the sailors, 
Seated erect on the thwarts, all ready and eager for 

starting. 
He too was eager to go, and thus put an end to his 

anguish, 
Thinking to fly from despair, that swifter than keel 

is or canvas, 
Thinking to drown in the sea the ghost that would 

rise and pursue him. 
But as he gazed on the crowd, he beheld the form 

of Priscilla 
Standing dejected among them, unconscious of all 

that was passing. 
Fixed were her eyes upon his, as if she divined his 

intention, 
Fixed with a look so sad, so reproachful, imploring, 

and patient, 
That with a sudden revulsion his heart recoiled 

from its purpose, 



92 HENRY WAD&.SORTH LONGFELLOW 

As from the verge of a crag, where one step more is 

destruction. 
Strange is the heart of man, with its quick, mys- 
terious instincts! 
Strange is the life of man, and fatal or fated are 

moments, 
Whereupon turn, as on hinges, the gates of the wall 

adamantine ! 
" Here I remain ! " x he exclaimed, as he looked at the 

heavens above him, 
Thanking the Lord whose breath had scattered the 

mist and the madness, 
Wherein, blind and lost, to death he was stagger- 
ing headlong. 
" Yonder snow-white cloud, that floats in the ether 

above me, 
Seems like a hand that is pointing and beckoning 

over the ocean. 
There is another hand, that is not so spectral and 

ghost-like, 
Holding me, drawing me back, and clasping mine 

for protection. 
Float, O hand of cloud, and vanish away in the 

ether ! 
Roll thyself up like a fist, to threaten and daunt 

me; I heed not 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 93 

Either your warning or menace, or any omen of 

evil! 
There is no land so sacred, no air so pure and so 

wholesome, 
As is the air she breathes, and the soil that is pressed 

by her footsteps. 
Here for her sake will I stay, and like an invisible 

presence 
Hover around her forever, protecting, supporting 

her weakness; 
Yes! as my foot was the first that stepped on this 

rock at the landing, 
So, with the blessing of God, shall it be the last at 

the leaving!" 

Meanwhile the Master alert, but with dignified 
air and important, 

Scanning with watchful eye the tide and the wind 
and the weather, 

Walked about on the sands, and the people crowded 
around him 

Saying a few last words, and enforcing his careful 
remembrance". 

Then, taking each by the hand, as if he were grasp- 
ing a tiller, 

Into the boat he sprang, and in haste shoved off 
to his vessel. 



94 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Glad in his heart to get rid of all this worry and 

flurry, 
Glad to be gone from a land of sand and sickness 

and sorrow, 
Short allowance of victual, and plenty of nothing 

but Gospel !■ 
Lost in the sound of oars was the last farewell of 

the Pilgrims. 
O strong hearts and true! not one went back in the 

Mayflower ! 
No, not one looked back, who had set his hand * to 

this plowing! 

Soon were heard on board the shouts and songs 

of the sailors 
Heaving the windlass round, and hoisting the pon- 
derous anchor. 
Then the yards were braced, and all sails set to the 

west wind, 
Blowing steady and strong; and the Mayflower 

sailed from the harbor, 
Rounded the point of the Gurnet, 2 and leaving far 

to the southward 
Island and cape of sand, and the Field of the First 

Encounter, 3 
Took the wind on her quarter, and stood for the 

open Atlantic, 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 95 

Borne on the send of the sea, and the swelling 
hearts of the Pilgrims. 

Long in silence they watched the receding sail 

of the vessel, 
Much endeared to them all, as something living 

and human; 
Then, ,as if filled with the spirit, and wrapt in a 

vision prophetic, 
Baring his hoary head, the excellent Elder of 

Plymouth 
Said, " Let us pray ! " and they prayed, and thanked 

the Lord and took courage. 1 
Mournfully sobbed the waves at the base of the 

rock, and above them 
Bowed and whispered the wheat on the hill of 

death, and their kindred 
Seemed to awake in their graves, and to join in the 

prayer that they uttered. 
Sun-illumined and white, on the eastern verge of 

the ocean 
Gleamed the departing sail, like a marble slab in a 

graveyard; 
Buried beneath it lay forever all hope of escaping. 
Lo ! as they turned to depart, they saw the form of 

an Indian, 



96 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Watching them from the hill; but while they spake 
with each other, 

Pointing with outstretched hands, and saying, 
" Look ! " he had vanished. 

So they returned to their homes; but Alden lin- 
gered a little, 

Musing alone on the shore, and watching the wash 
of the billows 

Round the base of the rock, and the sparkle and 
flash of the sunshine, 

Like the spirit of God, 1 moving visibly over the 
waters. 

VI 

PRISCILLA 

Thus for a while he stood, and mused by the 

shore of the ocean, 
Thinking of many things, and most of all of Pris- 

cilla; 
And as if thought had the power to draw to itself, 

like the loadstone, 
Whatsoever it touches, by subtle laws of its 

nature, 
Lo! as he turned to depart, Priscilla was standing 

beside him. 



98 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

"Ave you so much offended, you will not speak 

to me?" said she. 
" Am I so much to blame, that yesterday, when you 

were pleading 
Warmly the cause of another, my heart, impulsive 

and wayward, 
Pleaded your own, and spake out, forgetful perhaps 

of decorum? 
Certainly you can forgive me for speaking so frankly, 

for saying 
What I ought not to have said, yet now I can never 

unsay it; 
For there are moments in life, when the heart is so 

full of emotion, 
That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths 

like a pebble 
Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its 

secret, 
Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gath- 
ered together. 
Yesterday I was shocked, when I heard you speak 

of Miles Standish, 
Praising his virtues, transforming his very defects 

into virtues, 
Praising his courage and strength, and even hie 

fighting in Flanders. 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 99 

As if by fighting alone you could win the heart of a 

woman, 
Quite overlooking yourself and the rest, in exalting 

your hero. 
Therefore I spake as I did, by an irresistible impulse. 
You will forgive me, I hope, for the sake of the 

friendship between us, 
Which is too true and too sacred to be so easily 

broken!" 
Thereupon answered John Alden, the scholar, the 

friend of Miles Standish: 
" I was not angry with you, with myself alone I was 

angry, 
Seeing how badly I managed the matter I had in 

my keeping." 
" No! ,n interrupted the maiden, with answer prompt 

and decisive; 
"No; you were angry with me, for speaking so 

frankly and freely. 
It was wrong, I acknowledge; for it is the fate of a 

woman 
Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost 

that is speechless, 
Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its 

silence. 
Hence is the inner life of so many suffering women 



100 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Sunless and silent and deep, like subterranean 

rivers 
Running through caverns of darkness, unheard, 

unseen, and unfruitful, 
Chafing their channels of stone, with endless and 

profitless murmurs." 
Thereupon answered John Alden, the young man, 

the lover of women : 
"Heaven forbid it, Priscilla; and truly they seem 

to me always 
More like the beautiful rivers * that watered the 

garden of Eden, 
More like the river Euphrates, through deserts of 

Havilah flowing, 
Filling the land with delight, and memories sweet 

of the garden!" 
" Ah, by these words, I can see," again interrupted 

the maiden, 
"How very little you prize me, or care for what I 

am saying. 
When from the depths of my heart, in pain and 

with secret misgiving, 
Frankly I speak to you, asking for sympathy only 

and kindness, 
Straightway you take up my words, that are plain 

and direct and in earnest, 



THE COURT SHI? OF MILES STAN DISH 101 

Turn them away from their meaning, and answer 
with flattering phrases. 

This is not right, is not just, is not true to the best 
that is in you; 

For I know and esteem you, and feel that your 
nature is noble, 

Lifting mine up to a higher, a more ethereal level. 

Therefore I value your friendship, and feel it per- 
haps the more keenly 

If you say aught that implies I am only as one 
among many, 

If you make use of those common and compli- 
mentary phrases 

Most men think so fine, in dealing and speaking, 
with women, 

But which women reject as insipid, if not as in- 
sulting." 

Mute and amazed was Alden; and listened and 

looked at Priscilla, 
Thinking he never had seen her more fair, more 

divine in her beauty. 
He who but yesterday pleaded so glibly the cause 

of another, 
Stood there embarrassed and silent, and seeking in 

vain for an answer. 



102 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

So the maiden went on, and little divined or imag- 
ined 
What was at work in his heart, that made him so 

awkward and speechless. 
" Let us, then, be what we are, and speak what we 

think, and in all things 
Keep ourselves loyal to truth, and the sacred pro- 
fessions of friendship. 
It is no secret I tell you, nor am I ashamed to 

declare it: 
I have liked to be with you, to see you, to speak 

with you always. 
So I was hurt at your words, and a little affronted 

to hear you 
Urge me to marry your friend, though he were the 

Captain Miles Standish. 
For I must tell you the truth: much more to me is 

your friendship 
Than all the love he could give, were he twice the 

hero you think him." 
Then she extended her hand, and Alden, who 

eagerly grasped it, 
Felt all the wounds in his heart, that were aching 

and bleeding so sorely, 
Healed by the touch of that hand, and he said, 

with a voice full of feeling: 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STAN DISH 103 

11 Yes, we must ever be friends; and of all who offer 

you friendship 
Let me be e'er the first, the truest, the nearest and 

dearest ! " 

Casting a farewell look at the glimmering sail of 
the Mayflower 

Distant, but still in sight, and sinking below the 
horizon, 

Homeward together they walked, with a strange, 
indefinite feeling, 

That all the rest had departed and left them alone 
in the desert. 

But, as they went through the fields in the blessing 
and smile of the sunshine, 

Lighter grew their hearts, and Priscilla said very 
archly: 

" Now that our terrible Captain has gone in pursuit 
of the Indians, 

Where he is happier far than he would be command- 
ing a household, 

You may speak boldly, and tell me of all that 
happened between you, 

When you returned last night, and said how un- 
grateful you found me." 

Thereupon answered John Alden, and told her the 
whole of the story, — 



104 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Told her his own despair, and the direful wrath 1 of 

Miles Standish. 
Whereat the maiden smiled, and said between 

laughing and earnest, 
" He is a little chimney, and heated hot in a mo- 
ment!" 
But as he gently rebuked her, and told her how 

much he had suffered, — 
How he had even determined to sail that day in the 

Mayflower, 
And remained for her sake, on hearing the dangers 

that threatened, — 
All her manner was changed, 2 and she said with a 

faltering accent, 
^ Truly I thank you for this: how good you have 

been to me always ! " 

Thus, as a pilgrim devout, who toward Jerusalem 

journeys, 
Taking three steps in advance, and one reluctantly 

backward, 
Urged by importunate zeal, and withheld by pangs 

of contrition; 
Slowly but steadily onward, receding yet ever 

advancing, 
Journeyed this Puritan youth to the Holy Land s 

of his longings, 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 105 

Urged by the fervor of love, and withheld by re- 
morseful misgivings. 



VII 



THE MARCH OF MILES STANDISH 

Meanwhile the stalwart Miles Standish was 

marching steadily northward, 
Winding through forest and swamp, and along the 

trend of the seashore, 
All day long, with hardly a halt, the fire of his 

anger 
Burning and crackling within, and the sulphurous 

odor of powder 
Seeming more sweet to his nostrils than all the 

scents of the forest. 
Silent and moody he went, and much he revolved 

his discomfort; 
He who was used to success, and to easy victories 

always, 
Thus to be flouted, rejected, and laughed to scorn 

by a. maiden, 
Thus to be mocked and betrayed by the friend 

whom most he had trusted! 
Ah! 'twas too much to be borne, and he fretted and 

chafed in his armor! 



106 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

"I alone am to blame," he muttered, "for mine 

was the folly. 
What has a rough old soldier, grown grim and gray- 
in the harness, 
Used to the camp and its ways, to do with the 

wooing of maidens? 
'Twas but a dream, — let it pass, — let it vanish 

like so many others! 
What I thought was a flower, is only a weed, and is 

worthless; 
Out of my heart will I pluck it, and throw it away, 

and henceforward 
Be but a fighter of battles, a lover and wooer of 

dangers ! " 
Thus he revolved in his mind his sorry defeat and 

discomfort, 
While he was marching by day or lying at night in 

the forest, 
Looking up at the trees and the constellations 

beyond them. 

After a three days' march he came to an Indian 

encampment 
Pitched on the edge of a meadow, between the sea 

and the forest; 
Women at work by the tents, and the warriors, 

horrid with warpaint, 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 107 

Seated about a fire, and smoking and talking 

together; 
Who, when they saw from afar the sudden approach 

of the white men, 
Saw the flash of the sun on breastplate and saber 

and musket, 
Straightway leaped to their feet, and two, from 

among them advancing, 
Came to parley with Standish, and offer him furs 

as a present; 
Friendship was * in their looks, but in their hearts 

there was hatred. 
Braves of the tribe were these, and brothers, gigan- 
tic in stature, 
Huge as Goliath of Gath, or the terrible Og, 2 king 

of Bashan; 
One was Pecksuot named, and the other was called 

Wattawamat. 
Round their necks were suspended their knives in 

scabbards of wampum, 3 
Two-edged, trenchant knives, with points as sharp 

as a needle. 
Other arms had they none, for they were cunning 

and crafty. 
"Welcome, English \" they said, — these words 

they had learned from the traders 



108 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Touching at times on the coast, to barter and 

chaffer for peltries. 
Then in their native tongue they began to parley 

with Standish, 
Through his guide and interpreter, Hobomok, friend 

of the white man, 
Begging for blankets and knives, but mostly for 

muskets and powder, 
Kept by the white man, they said, dbncealed, with 

the plague, in his cellars, 
Ready to be let loose, and destroy his brother the 

red man! 
But when Standish refused, and said he would give 

them the Bible, 
Suddenly changing their tone, they began to boast 

and to blusteiv 
Then Wattawamat ' advanced with a stride in 

front of the other, 
And, with a lofty demeanor, thus vauntingly spake 

to the Captain: 
" Now Wattawamat can see, by the fiery eyes of 

the Captain, 
Angry is he in his heart; but the heart of the brave 

Wattawamat 
Is not afraid at the sight. He was not born of a 

woman, 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 109 

But on a mountain, at night, from an oak-tree riven 

by lightning, 
Forth he sprang at a bound, with all his weapons 

about him, 
Shouting, ' Who is there here to fight with the 

brave Wattawamat?'" 
Then he unsheathed his knife, and, whetting the 

blade on his left hand, 
Held it aloft and displayed a woman's face on the 

handle, 
Saying, with bitter expression and look of sinister 

meaning : 
"I have another at home, with the face of a man 

on the handle; 
By and by they shall marry; and there will be 

plenty of children!" 

Then stood Pecksuot forth, self-vaunting, in- 
sulting Miles Standish; 

While with his fingers he patted the knife that hung 
at his bospm, 

Drawing it half from its sheath, and plunging it 
back, as he muttered, 

"By and by it shall see; it shall eat; ah, ha! but 
shall speak not! 

This is the mighty Captain the white men have sent 
to destroy us! 



110 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

He is a little man; let him go and work with the 
women!" 

Meanwhile Standish had noted the faces and 

figures of Indians 
Peeping and creeping about from bush to tree in 

the forest, • 
Feigning to look for game, with arrows set on their 

bow-strings, 
Drawing about him still closer and closer the net of 

their ambush. 
But undaunted he stood, and dissembled and treated 

them smoothly; 
So the old chronicles say, that were writ in the days 

of the fathers. 
But when he heard their defiance, the boast, the 

taunt, and the insult, 
All the hot blood of his race, of Sir Hugh and of 

Thurston de Standish, 
Boiled and beat in his heart, and swelled in the 

veins of his temples. 
Headlong he leaped on the boaster, 1 and, snatching 

his knife from its scabbard, 
Plunged it into his heart, and, reeling backward, 

the savage 
Fell with his face to the sky, and a fiendlike fierce- 
ness npon it. 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 111 

Straight there arose from the forest the awful sound 

of the war-whoop, 
And, like a flurry of snow on the whistling wind of 

December, 
Swift and sudden and keen came a flight of feathery 

arrows. 
Then came a cloud of smoke, and out of the cloud 

came the lightning, 
Out of the lightning thunder; l and death unseen 

ran before it. 
Frightened, the savages fled for shelter in swamp 

and in thicket, 
Hotly pursued and beset; but their sachem, the 

brave Wattawamat, 
Fled not; he was dead. Unswerving and swift had 

a bullet 
Passed through his brain, and he fell with both 

hands clutching the greensward, 
Seeming in death to hold back from his foe the land 

of his fathers. 

There on the flowers of the meadow the warrior*. 

lay, and above them 
Silent, with folded arms, stood Hobomok, 2 friend of 

the white man. 
Smiling at length he exclaimed to the stalwart 

Captain of Plymouth: 



112 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

"Pecksuot bragged very loud, of his courage, his 

strength, and his stature, — 
Mocked the great Captain, and called him a little 

man; but I see now 
Big enough have you been to lay him speechless 

before you!" 

Thus the first battle was fought and won by the 

stalwart Miles Standish. 
When the tidings thereof were brought to the 

village of Plymouth, 
And as a trophy of war the head of the brave Wat- 

tawamat 
Scowled from the roof of the fort, which at once was 

a church and a fortress, 
All who beheld it rejoiced, and praised the Lord, 

and took courage. 
Only Priscilla averted her face from this specter of 

terror, 
Thanking God in her heart that she had not married 

Miles Standish; 
Shrinking, fearing almost, lest, coming home from 

his battles, 
He should lay claim to her hand, as the prize and 

reward of his valor. 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 113 

VIII 

THE SPINNING WHEEL 

Month after month passed away, and in autumn 

the ships of the merchants 
Came * with kindreds and friends, with cattle and 

corn for the Pilgrims. 
All in the village was peace; the men were intent on 

their labors, 
Busy with hewing and building, with garden plot 

and with merestead, 
Busy with breaking the glebe, and mowing the 

grass in the meadows, 
Searching the sea for its fish, and hunting the deer 

in the forest. 
All in the village was peace; but at times the rumor 

of warfare 
Filled the air with alarm, and the apprehension of 

danger. 
Bravely the stalwart Miles Standish was scouring 

the land with his forces, 
Waxing valiant in fight 2 and defeating the alien 

armies, 
Till his name had become a sound of fear to the 

nations. 



114 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Anger was still in his heart, bub at times the re- 
morse and contrit'cii 

Which in all noble natures succeed the passionate 
outbreak, 

Came like a rising tide, that encounters the rush of 
a river, 

Staying its current a while, but making it bitter 
and brackish. 

Meanwhile Alden at home had built him a new 
.habitation, 
Solid, substantial, of timber rough-hewn from the 

firs of the forest. 
Wooden-barred was the door, and the roof was 

covered with rushes; 
Latticed the windows were, and the window-panes 

were of paper, 
Oiled to admit the light, while wind and rain were 

excluded. 
There too he dug a well, and around it planted an 

orchard : 
Still may be seen to this day * some trace of the 

well and the orchard. 
Close to the house was the stall, where, safe and 

secure from annoyance, 
Raghorn, the snow-white bull, that had fallen to 

Alden 's allotment 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 115 

In the division of cattle, might ruminate in the 
night-time 

Over the pastures he cropped, made fragrant by- 
sweet pennyroyal. 

Oft when his labor was finished, with eager feev 

would the dreamer 
Follow the pathway that ran through the woods to 

the house of Priscilla ; 
Led by illusions romantic and subtile deceptions of 

fancy, 
Pleasure disguised as duty, and love in the sem- 
blance of friendship. 
Ever of her he thought, when he fashioned the walls 

of his dwelling; 
Ever of her he thought, when he delved in the soil 

of his garden; 
Ever of her he thought, when he read in his Bible 

on Sunday 
Praise of the virtuous woman, as she is described in 

the Proverbs, 1 — 
How the heart of her husband doth safely trust in 

her always, 
How all the days of her life she will do him good, 

and not evil, 
How she seeketh the wool and the flax and worketh 

with gladness, 



116 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

How she layeth her hand to the spindle and holdeth 

the distaff, 
How she is not afraid of the snow for herself or her 

household, 
Knowing her household are clothed with the scarlet 

cloth of her weaving! 

So as she sat at her wheel one afternoon in the 

autumn, 
Alden, who opposite sat, and was watching her 

dexterous fingers, 
As if the thread she was spinning were that of his 

life and his fortune, 
After a pause in their talk, thus spake to the sound 

of the spindle: 
"Truly, Priscilla," he said, "when I see you spin- 
ning and spinning, 
Never idle a moment, but thrifty and thoughtful of 

others, 
Suddenly you are transformed, are visibly changed 

in a moment; 
You are no longer Priscilla, but Bertha the Beauti- 

fu\ Spinner." 
Here the light foot on the treadle grew swifter and 

swifter; the spindle 
Uttered an angry snarl, and the thread snapped 

short in her fingers; 









THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 117 

While the impetuous speaker, not heeding the mis- 
chief, continued: 

"You are the beautiful Bertha, the spinner, the 
queen of Helvetia; 1 

She whose story I read at a stall in the streets of 
Southampton, 

Who, as she rode on her palfrey, o'er valley and 
meadow and mountain, 

Ever was spinning her thread from a distaff fixed 
to her saddle. 

She was so thrifty and good, that her name passed 
into a proverb. 

So shall it be with your own, when the spinning 
wheel shall no longer 

Hum in the house of the farmer, and fill its cham- 
bers with music. 

Then shall the mothers, reproving, relate how it 
was in their childhood, 

Praising the good old times, and the days of Pris- 
cilla the spinner!" 

Straight uprose from her wheel the beautiful Puri- 
tan maiden, 

Pleased with the praise of her thrift from him whose 
praise was the sweetest, 

Drew from the reel on the table a snowy skein of 
tier spinning, 



118 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Thus making answer, meanwhile, to the flattering 

phrases of Alden: 
"Come, you must not be idle; if I am a pattern for 

housewives, 
Show yourself equally worthy of being the model of 

husbandsc 
Hold this skein on your hands, while I wind it, 

ready for knitting; 
Then who knows but hereafter, when fashions have 

changed and the manners, 
Fathers may talk to their sons of the good old 

times of John Alden!" 
Thus, with a jest and a laugh, the skein on his 

hands she adjusted, 
He sitting awkwardly there, with his arms extended 

before him, 
She standing graceful, erect, and winding the thread 

from his fingers, 
Sometimes chiding a little his clumsy manner of 

holding, 
Sometimes touching his hands, as she disentangled 

expertly 
Twist or knot in the yarn, unawares — for how 

could she help it? — * 

Sending electrical thrills through every nerve in 

his body. 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 119 

Lo! in the midst of this scene, a breathless mes- 
senger entered, 
Bringing in hurry and heat the terrible news from 

the village. 
Yes; Miles Standish was dead! — an Indian had 

brought them the tidings, — ■ 
Slain by a poisoned arrow, shot down in the front 

of the battle, 
Into an ambush beguiled, cut off with the whole of 

his forces; 
All the town would be burned, and all the people be 

murdered ! 
Such were the tidings of evil that burst on the 

hearts of the hearers. 
Silent and statue-like stood Priscilla, her face look- 
ing backward 
Still at the face of the speaker, her arms uplifted 

in horror; 
But John Alden, upstarting, as if the barb of the 

arrow 
Piercing the heart of his friend had struck his own, 

and had sundered 
Once and forever the bonds that held him bound 

as a captive, 
Wild with excess of sensation, the awful delight of 

his freedom, 



120 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Mingled with pain and regret, unconscious of what 

he was doing, 
Clasped, almost with a groan, the motionless form 

of Priscilla, 
Pressing her close to his heart, as forever his own, 

and exclaiming: 
"Those whom the Lord hath united, let no man 

put them asunder!" 1 

Even as rivulets twain, from distant and sep- 
arate sources, 
Seeing each other afar, as they leap from the rocks, 

and pursuing 
Each one its devious path, but drawing nearer and 

nearer, 
Rush together at last, at their trysting-place in the 

forest; 
So these lives that had run thus far in separate 

channels, 
Coming in sight of each other, then swerving anc? 

flowing asunder, 
Parted by barriers strong, but drawing nearer and 

nearer, 
Rushed together at last, and one was lost in the 

other. 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 12J 
IX 
THE WEDDING-DAY 

Forth from the curtain of clouds, from the tent 
of purple and scarlet, 

Issued the sun, 1 the great High-Priest, in his gar- 
ments resplendent, 

Holiness unto the Lord, in letters of light, on his 
forehead, 

Round the hem of his robe the golden bells and 
pomegranates. 

Blessing the world he came, and the bars of vapor 
beneath him 

Gleamed like a grate of brass, and the sea at his 
feet was a laver! 

This was the wedding morn of Priscilla the Puri- 
tan maiden. 

Friends were assembled together; the Elder and 
Magistrate also 

Graced the scene with their presence, and stood 
like the Law and the Gospel, 

One with the sanction of earth and one with the 
blessing of heaven. 

Simple and brief was the wedding, as that of Ruth 
and of Boaz. 2 



122 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Softly the youth and the maiden repeated the 

words of betrothal, 
Taking each other for husband and wife in the 

Magistrate's presence, 
After the Puritan way, and the laudable custom of 

Holland. 1 
Fervently then and devoutly, the excellent Elder 

of Plymouth 
Prayed for the hearth and the home, that were 

founded that day in affection, 
Speaking of life and of death, and imploring Divine 

benedictions. 

Lo ! when the service was ended, a form appeared 
on the threshold, 

Clad in armor of steel, a somber and sorrowful 
figure ! 

Why does the bridegroom start and stare at the 
strange apparition? 

Why does the bride turn pale, and hide her face on 
his shoulder? 

Is it a phantom of air, — a bodiless, spectral illusion? 

Is it a ghost from the grave, that has come to for- 
bid the betrothal? 

Long had it stood there unseen, a guest uninvited, 
unwelcomed; 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 123 

Over its clouded eyes there had passed at times an 

expression 
Softening the gloom and revealing the warm heart 

hidden beneath them, 
As when across the sky the driving rack l of the 

rain cloud 
Grows for a moment thin, and betrays the sun by 

its brightness. 
Once it had lifted its hand, and moved its lips, but 

was silent, 
As if an iron will had mastered the fleeting inten- 
tion. , 
But when were ended the troth and the prayer and 

the last benediction, 
Into the room it strode, and the people beheld with 

amazement 
Bodily there in his armor Miles Standish, the Cap- 
tain of Plymouth! 
Grasping the bridegroom's hand, he said with 

emotion, "Forgive me! 
I have been angry and hurt, — too long have I 

cherished the feeling; 
I have been cruel and hard, but now, thank God! 

it is ended. 
Mine is the same hot blood that leaped in the veins 

of Hugh Standish, 



124 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Sensitive, swift to resent, but as swift in atoning for 
error. 

Never so much as now was Miles Standish the 
friend of John Alden." 

Thereupon answered the bridegroom: "Let all be 
forgotten between us, — 

All save the dear old friendship, and that shall 
grow older and dearer!" 

Then the Captain advanced, and, bowing, saluted 
Priscilla, 

Gravely, and after the manner of old-fashioned 
gentry in England, * 

Something of camp and court, of town and of 
country, commingled, 

Wishing her joy of her wedding, and loudly lauding 
her husband. 

Then he said with a smile : " I should have remem- 
bered the adage, — 

If you would be well served, you must serve your- 
self, and, moreover, 

No man can gather cherries in Kent x at the season 
of Christmas!" 

Great was the people's amazement, and greater 
yet their rejoicing, 
Thus to behold once more the sunburnt face of 
their Captain, 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STAN DISH 125 

Whom they had mourned as dead; and they gath- 
ered and crowded about him, 

Eager to see him and hear him, forgetful of bride 
and of bridegroom, 

Questioning, answering, laughing, and each inter- 
rupting the other, 

Till the good Captain declared, being quite over- 
powered and bewildered, 

He had rather by far break into an Indian encamp- 
ment, 

Than come again to a wedding to which he had not 
been invited. 

Meanwhile the bridegroom went forth and stood 

with the bride at the doorway, 
Breathing the perfumed air of that warm and 

beautiful morning. 
Touched with autumnal tints, but lonely and sad 

in the sunshine, 
Lay extended before them the land of toil and 

privation; 
There were the graves of the dead, and the barren 

waste of the seashore, 
There the familiar fields, the groves of pine, and 

the meadows; 
But to their eyes transfigured, it seemed as the 

Garden of Eden, 



126 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Filled with the presence of God, whose voice was 
the sound of the ocean. 

Soon was their vision disturbed by the noise and 

stir of departure, 
Friends coming forth from the house, and impatient 

of longer delaying, 
Each with his plan for the day, and the work that 

was left uncompleted. 
Then from a stall near at hand, amid exclamations 

of wonder, 
Alden, the thoughtful, the careful, so happy, so 

proud of Priscilla, 
Brought out his snow-white bull, obeying the hand 

of its master, 
Led by a cord that was tied to an iron ring in its 

nostrils, 
Covered with crimson cloth, and a cushion placed 

for a saddle. 
She should not walk, he said, through the dust and 

heat of the noonday; 
Nay, she should ride like a queen, not plod along 

like a peasant. 
Somewhat alarmed at first, but reassured by the 

others, 
Placing her hand on the cushion, her foot in the 

hand of her husband, 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 127 

Gayly, with joyous laugh, Priscilla mounted her 

palfrey. 
" Nothing is wanting now," he said with a smile, 

"but the distaff; 
Then you would be in truth my queen, my beautiful 

Bertha!" 

Onward the bridal procession now moved to their 

new habitation, 
Happy husband and wife, and friends conversing 

together. 
Pleasantly murmured the brook, as they crossed 

the ford in the forest, 
Pleased with the image ! that passed, like a dream 

of love through its bosom, 
Tremulous, floating in air, o'er the depths of the 

azure abysses. 
Down through the golden leaves the sun was poui 

ing his splendors, 
Gleaming on purple grapes, that, from branches 

above them suspended, 
Mingled their odorous breath with the balm of the 

pine and the fir-tree, 
Wild and sweet as the clusters that grew in the 

valley of Eshcol. 2 
Like a picture it seemed of the primitive, pastoral 

ages, 



128 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Fresh with the youth of the world, and recalling 

Rebecca and Isaac/ 
Old and yet ever new, 2 and simple and beautiful 

always, 
Love immortal and young in the endless succession 

of lovers. 
So through the Plymouth woods passed onward the 

bridal procession. 




JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

SNOW-BOUND 

A WINTER IDYH 

To the Memory of the Household it Describes 

THIS POEM IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR 

" As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so 
good Spirits which be Angels of Light are augmented not 
only by the Divine light of the Sun, but also by our common 
Wood Fire : and as the Celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, 
so also this our Fire of Wood doth the same. " — Cor. Agrippa, 
Occult Philosophy, 2 Book I. ch. v. 

" Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, 
Arrives the snow; and, driving o'er the fields, 
Seems nowhere to alight; the whited air 
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven, 
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end. 
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet 
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit 
Around the radiant fireplace, inclosed 
In a tumultuous privacy of storm." 

Emerson, The Snow-Storm. 

The sun that brief December day 8 
Rose cheerless over hills of gray, 
And, darkly circled, gave at noon 
A sadder light than waning moon. 
Slow tracing down the thickening sky 
129 



130 JOHN GREENLEAF WH1TTIER 

Its mute and ominous prophecy, 

A portent seeming less than threat, 

It sank from sight before it set. 

A chill no coat, however stout, 

Of homespun stuff x could quite shut out, 

A hard, dull bitterness of cold, 

That checked, mid-vein, the circling race 

Of life-blood in the sharpened face, 

The coming 2 of the snow-storm told. 

The wind blew east; we heard the roar 3 

Of Ocean on his wintry shore, 

And felt the strong pulse throbbing there 

Beat with low rhythm our inland air. 

Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, — 
Brought in the wood from out of doors, 
Littered the stalls, and from the mows 
Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows: 
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn; 
And, sharply clashing horn on horn, 
Impatient down the stanchion 4 rows 
The cattle shake their walnut bows; 
While, peering from his early perch 
Upon the scaffold's pole of birch, 
The cock his crested 5 helmet bent 
And down his querulous fl challenge sent. 



SNOW-BOUND 131 

Unwarmed by any sunset light 

The gray day darkened into night, 

A night made hoary with the swarm 

And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, 

As zigzag wavering to and fro 

Crossed and recrossed the winged snow: 

And ere the early bedtime came 

The white drift piled the window-frame, 

And through the glass the clothes-line posts 

Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. 1 

So all night long the storm roared on: 

The morning broke without a sun; 

In tiny spherule 2 traced with lines 

0/ Nature's geometric signs, 

In starry flake and pellicle 

All day the hoary meteor fell; 

And, when the second morning shone, 

We looked upon a world unknown, 

On nothing we could call our own. 

Around the glistening wonder bent 

The blue walls of the firmament, 

No cloud above, no earth below, — = 

A universe of sky and snow! 

The old familiar sights of ours 

Took marvelous shapes; strange domes and towers 

Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood, 



132 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

Or garden-wall or belt of wood; 

A smooth white mound 1 the brush-pile showed, 

A fenceless drift what once was road; 

The bridle-post an old man sat 

With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat; 

The well-curb had a Chinese roof; 

And even the long sweep, high aloof, 

In its slant splendor, seemed to tell 

Of Pisa's leaning miracle. 2 

A prompt, decisive man, no breath 
Our father 3 wasted : " Boys, a path ! " 
Well pleased (for when did farmer boy 
Count such a summons less than joy?) 
Our buskins 4 on our feet we drew; 

With mittened hands, and caps drawn low, 
To guard our necks and ears from snow, 
We cut the solid whiteness through; 
And, where the drift was deepest, made 
A tunnel walled and overlaid 
With dazzling crystal: we had read 
Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave, 5 
And to our own his name we gave, 
With many a wish the luck were ours 
To test his lamp's supernal powers. 
We reached the barn with merry din, 



SNOW-BOUND 133 

And roused the prisoned brutes within. 
The old horse thrust his long head out, 
And grave with wonder gazed about; 
The cock his lusty greeting said, 
And forth his speckled harem led; 
The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked, 
And mild reproach of hunger looked; 
The horned patriarch of the sheep, 
Like Egypt's Amun 1 roused from sleep, 
Shook his sage head with gesture mute, 
And emphasized with stamp of foot. 

All day the gusty north-wind bore 

The loosened drift its breath before; 

Low circling round its southern zone, 

The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone. 

No church-bell 2 lent its Christian tone 

To the savage air, no social smoke 

Curled over woods of snow-hung oak. 

A solitude 3 made more intense 

By dreary-voiced elements, 

The shrieking of the mindless wind, 

The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind, 

And on the glass the unmeaning beat 

Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet. 

Beyond the circle of our hearth 



134 JOHN GREEN LEAF WHIT TIER 

No welcome sound of toil or mirth 
Unbound the spell, and testified 
Of human life and thought outside. 
We minded * that the sharpest ear 
The buried brooklet 2 could not hear, 
The music of. whose liquid lip 
Had been to us companionship, 
And, in our lonely life, had grown 
To have an almost human tone. 

As night drew on, and, from the crest 
Of wooded knolls 3 that ridged the west, 
The sun, a snow-blown traveler, sank 
From sight beneath the smothering bank, 
We piled with care our nightly stack 
Of wood against the chimney-back, — 
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, 
And on its top the stout back-stick; 
The knotty forestick laid apart, 
And filled between with curious art 
The ragged brush; then, hovering near, 
We watched the first red blaze appear, 
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam 
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, 
Until the old, rude-furnished room 
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom; 



SNOW-BOUND 135 

While radiant with a mimic flame 
Outside the sparkling drift became, 
And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree 
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. 
The crane and pendent trammels 1 showed, 
The Turk's heads on the andirons 2 glowed; 
While childish fancy, prompt to tell 
The meaning of the miracle, 
Whispered the old rhyme: " Under the tree, 
When fire outdoors burns merrily, 
There the witches are making tea." 

The moon above the eastern wood 
Shone at its full; the hill-range stood 
Transfigured in the silver flood, 
Its blown snows flashing cold and keen, 
Dead white, save where some sharp ravine 
Took shadow, or the somber green 
Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black 
Against the whiteness of their back. 
For such a world and such a night 
Most fitting that unwarming light, 
Which only seemed where'er it fell 
To make the coldness visible. 

Shut in from all the world without, 



136 JOHN GREEN LEAF WHITTIER 

We sat the clean-winged hearth l about, 
Content to let the north-wind roar 
In baffled rage at pane and door, 
While the red logs before us beat 
The frost-line 2 back with tropic heat; 
And ever, when a louder blast 
Shook beam and rafter as it passed, 
The merrier up its roaring draught 
The great throat of the. chimney laughed; 
The house-dog on his paws outspread 
Laid to the fire his drowsy head, 
The cat's dark silhouette 8 on the wall 
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; 
And, for the winter fireside meet, 4 
Between the andirons' straddling feet, 
The mug of cider simmered slow, 
The apples sputtered in a row, 
And, close at hand, the basket stood 
With nuts from brown October's 5 wood. 

What matter how the night behaved? 
What matter how the north-wind raved? 
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow 
Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow. 
O Time and Change ! — with hair as gray 
As was my sire's that winter day, 



SNOW-BOUND 137 

How strange it seems, with so much gone 

Of life and love, to still live on ! 

Ah, brother ! only I and thou 1 

Are left of all that circle now, — 

The dear home faces whereupon 

That fitful firelight paled and shone. 

Henceforward, listen as we will, 

The voices of that hearth are still; 2 

Look where we may, the wide earth o ? er, 

Those lighted faces smile no more. 

We tread the paths their feet have worn, 

We sit beneath their orchard trees, 

We hear, like them, the hum of bees 
And rustle of the bladed corn; 
We turn the pages that they read, 

Their written words we linger o'er, 
But in the sun they cast no shade, 
No voice is heard, no sign is made, 

No step is on the conscious floor! 
Yet Love will dream and Faith will trust 
(Since He who knows our need is just) 
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. 
Alas for him who never sees 
The stars shine through his cypress-trees ! 3 
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 
Nor looks to see the breaking day 



138 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

Across the mournful marbles 1 play ! 
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, 

The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
That Life is ever lord of Death, 

And Love can never lose its own! 

We sped the time 2 with stories old, 
Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told, 
Or stammered from our school-book lore 
" The chief of Gambia's 3 golden shore." 
How often since, when all the land 
Was clay in Slavery's shaping hand, 4 
As if a trumpet called, I 've heard 
Dame Mercy Warren's rousing word: 
" Does not the voice of reason cry, 

Claim the first right which Nature gave, 
From the red scourge of bondage fly 

Nor deign to live a burdened slave! " 
Our father rode again his ride 
On Memphremagog's 5 wooded side; 
Sat down again to moose and samp * 
In trapper's hut and Indian camp; 
Lived o'er the old idyllic ease 
Beneath St. Francois' 7 hemlock trees; 
Again for him the moonlight shone 
On Norman cap and bodiced zone; 8 



SNOW-BOUND 139 

Again he heard the violin play 
Which led the village dance away, 
And mingled in its merry whirl 
The grandam and the laughing girl, 
Or, nearer home, our steps he led 
Where Salisbury's level marshes * spread 

Mile-wide as flies the laden bee; 
Where merry mowers, hale and strong, 
Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along 2 

The low green prairies of the sea. 
We shared the fishing off Boar's Head, 3 

And round the rocky Isles of Shoals 

The hake- broil on the driftwood coals; 
The chowder on the sand-beach made, 
Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot, 
With spoons of clam-shell from the pot. 
We heard the tales of witchcraft old, 
And dream and sign and marvel told 
To sleepy listeners as they lay 
Stretched icily on the salted hay, 
Adrift along the winding shores, 

When favoring breezes deigned to blow 

The square sail of the gundalow, 
And idle lay the useless oars. 
Our mother, while she turned her wheel 
Or run the new-knit stocking heel, 



140 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

Told how the Indian hordes came down 
At midnight on Cocheco town/ 
And how her own great-uncle bore 
His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore. 
Recalling, in her fitting phrase, 
So rich and picturesque and free 
(The common unrhymed poetry 
Of simple life and country ways), 
The story of her early days, — 
She made us welcome 2 to her home; 
Old hearths grew wide to give us room; 
We stole with her a frightened look 
At the gray wizard's conjuring-book, 
The fame whereof went far and wide 
Through all the simple country-side; 
We heard the hawks at twilight play, 
The boat-horn on Piscataqua, 3 
The loon's weird laughter far away; 
We fished her little trout-brook, knew 
What flowers in wood and meadow grew, 
What sunny hillsides autumn-brown 
She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down, 
Saw where in sheltered cove and bay 
The ducks' black squadron anchored lay, 
And heard the wild geese calling loud 
Beneath the gray November cloud. 



SNOW-BOUND 141 

Then, haply, with a look more grave 

And soberer tone, some tale she gave * 

From painful Sewel's 2 ancient tome, 

Beloved in every Quaker home, 

Of faith fire-winged 3 by martyrdom, 

Or Chalkley's Journal, old and quaint, 4 — • 

Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint! — 

Who, when the dreary calms prevailed, 

And water-butt and bread-cask failed, 

And cruel, hungry eyes pursued 

His portly presence, mad for food, 

With dark hints muttered under breath 

Of casting lots for life or death, 

Offered, 5 if Heaven withheld supplies, 

To be himself the sacrifice. 

Then, suddenly, as if to save 

The good man from his living grave, 

A ripple on the water grew, 

A school of porpoise flashed in view. 

"Take, eat," he said, "and be content; 

These fishes in my stead are sent 

By Him who gave the tangled ram 

To spare the child of Abraham." 6 

Our uncle, 7 innocent of books, 

Was rich in lore of fields and brooks, 



142 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

The ancient teachers never dumb 
Of Nature's unhoused lyceum. 1 
In moons and tides and weather wise, 
He read the clouds as prophecies, 
And foul or fair could well divine, 
By many an occult hint and sign, 
Holding the cunning-warded keys 
To all the woodcraft mysteries; 
Himself to Nature's heart so near 
That all her voices in his ear 
Of beast or bird had meanings clear, 
Like Apollonius 2 of old, 
Who knew the tales the sparrows told, 
Or Hermes, 3 who interpreted 
What the sage cranes of Nilus said; 
A simple, guileless, childlike man, 
Content to live where life began; 
Strong only on his native grounds, 
The little world of sights and sounds 
Whose girdle was the parish bounds, 
Whereof his fondly partial pride 
The common features magnified, 
As Surrey hills to mountains grew 
In White of Selborne's 4 loving view, 
He told how teal and loon he shot, 
And how the eagle's eggs he got, 



SNOW-BOUND 143 

The feats on pond and river done, 

The prodigies of rod and gun; 

Till, warming with the tales he told, 

Forgotten was the outside cold, 

The bitter wind unheeded blew, 

From ripening corn the pigeons flew, 

The partridge drummed i' the wood, the mink 

Went fishing down the river-brink. 

In fields with bean or clover gay, 

The woodchuck, like a hermit gray, 

Peered from the doorway of his cell; 
The muskrat plied the mason's trade, 
And tier by tier his mud-walls laid; 
And from the shagbark overhead 

The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell. 

Next, the dear aunt, 1 whose smile of cheer 
And voice in dreams I see and hear, — 
The sweetest woman ever Fate 
Perverse denied a household mate, 
Who, lonely, homeless, not the less 
Found peace in love's unselfishness, 
And welcome whereso'er she went, 
A calm and gracious element, 
Whose presence seemed the sweet income 
And womanly atmosphere of home, — • 



144 JOHN GREEN LEAF WHITTIER 

Called up her girlhood memories, 
The huskings and the apple-bees, 
The sleigh-rides and the summer sails, 
Weaving through all the poor details 
And homespun warp of circumstance 1 
A golden woof-thread of romance. 
For well she kept her genial mood 
And simple faith of maidenhood; 
Before her still a cloud-land lay, 
The mirage loomed across her way; 
The morning dew, that dried so soon 
With others, glistened at her noon; 
Through years of toil and soil and care, 
From glossy tress to thin gray hair, 
All unprofaned she held apart 
The virgin fancies of the heart. 
Be shame to him of woman born 
Who had for such but 2 thought of scorn. 

There, too, our elder sister plied 
Her evening task the stand beside; 3 
A full, rich nature, free to trust, 
Truthful and almost sternly just, 
Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act, 
And make her generous thought a fact, 
Keeping with many a light disguise 



SNOW-BOUND 145 

The secret of self-sacrifice. 

heart sore-tried! thou hast the best 
That Heaven itself could give thee, — rest, 
Rest from all bitter thoughts and things! 

How many a poor one's blessing went 
With thee beneath the low green tent 
Whose curtain never * outward swings I 

As one who held herself a part 
Of all she saw, and let her heart 

Against the household bosom lean, 
Upon the motley-braided 2 mat 
Our youngest and our dearest sat, 
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes, 
Now bathed within the fadeless green 
And holy peace of Paradise. 
Oh, looking from some heavenly hill, 

Or from the shade of saintly palms, 

Or silver reach of river calms, 
Do those large eyes behold me still? 
With me one little year ago : 3 — 
The chill weight of the winter snow 

For months upon her grave has lain; 
And now, when summer south-winds blow 

And brier and harebell bloom again, 

1 tread the pleasant paths we trod, 



146 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

I see the violet-sprinkled sod, 
Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak 
The hillside flowers she loved to seek, 
Yet following me where'er I went 
With dark eyes full of love's content. 
The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills 

The air with sweetness; all the hills 
Stretch green to June's unclouded sky; 
But still I wait with ear and eye 
For something gone which should be nigh, 
A loss in all familiar things, 1 
In flower that blooms, and bird that singsr 
And yet, dear heart ! remembering thee, 

Am I not richer than of old? 
Safe in thy immortality, 

What change can reach the wealth I hold? 

What chance can mar the pearl and gold 
Thy love hath left' in trust with me? 
And while in life's late afternoon, 

Where cool and long the shadows grow, 
I walk to meet the night that soon 

Shall shape and shadow overflow, 
I cannot feel that thou art far, 
Since near at need the angels are; 
And when the sunset gates unbar, 

Shall I not see thee waiting stand, 



SNOW-BOUND 147 

And, "white against the evening star, 
The welcome of thy beckoning hand? 

Brisk wielder of the birch and rule, 

The master of the district school 1 

Held at the fire his favored place; 

Its warm glow lit a laughing face 

Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared 

The uncertain prophecy of beard. 

He teased the mitten-blinded cat, 

Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat, 

Sang songs, and told us what befalls 

In classic Dartmouth's college halls. 

Born the wild Northern hills among, 

From whence his yeoman father wrung 

By patient toil subsistence scant, 

Not competence and yet not want, 

He early gained the power to pay 

His cheerful, self-reliant way; 

Could doff at ease his scholar's gown 

To peddle wares from town to town; 

Or through the long vacation's reach 

In lonely lowland districts teach, 

Where all the droll experience 2 found 

At stranger hearths in boarding round, 

The moonlit skater's keen delight, 



148 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

The sleigh-drive through the frosty night, 
The rustic party, 1 with its rough 
Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff, 
And whirling plate, and forfeits paid, 
His winter task a pastime made. 
Happy the snow-locked homes wherein 
He tuned his merry violin, 
Or played the athlete in the barn, 
Or held the good dame's winding yarn, 
Or mirth-provoking versions told 
Of classic legends rare and old, 
Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome 
Had all the commonplace of home, 
And little seemed at best the odds 
'Twixt Yankee peddlers and old gods; 
Where Pindus-born Arachthus 2 took 
The guise of any grist-mill brook, 
And dread Olympus 3 at his will 
Became a huckleberry hill. 
A careless boy that night he seemed; 

But at his desk he had the look 
And air of one who wisely schemed, 
And hostage from the future took 
In trained thought and lore of book. 
Large-brained, clear-eyed, — of such as he 
Shall Freedom's young apostles be 



SNOW-BOUND 149 

Who, following in War's bloody trail, 

Shall every lingering wrong assail; 

All chains from limb and spirit strike, 

Uplift the black and white alike; 

Scatter before their swift advance 

The darkness and the ignorance, 

The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth, 

Which nurtured Treason's monstrous growth, 

Made murder pastime, and the hell 

Of prison-torture possible; 

The cruel lie of caste refute, 

Old forms remold; and substitute 

For Slavery's lash the freeman's will, 

For blind routine, wise-handed skill; 

A school-house plant 1 on every hill, 

Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence 

The quick wires of intelligence; 

Till North and South together brought 

Shall own the same electric thought, 

In peace a common flag salute, 

And, side by side in labor's free 

And unresentful rivalry, 

Harvest the fields wherein they fought. 

Another guest 2 that winter night 
Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light. 



150 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

Unmarked by time, and yet not young, 

The honeyed music of her tongue 

And words of meekness scarcely told 

A nature passionate and bold, 

Strong, self-concentered, spurning guide, 

Its milder features dwarfed beside 

Her unbent will's majestic pride. 

•She sat among us, at the best, 

A not unf eared, half- welcome guest, 

Rebuking with her cultured phrase 

Our homeliness of words and ways. 

A certain pard-like, treacherous grace 

Swayed the lithe limbs and dropped the lash, 
Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash; 
And under low brows, black with night, 
Rayed out at times a dangerous light; 

The sharp heat-lightnings * of her face 

Presaging ill to him whom Fate 

Condemned to share her love or hate. 

A woman tropical, intense 

In thought and act, in soul and sense, 

She blended in a like degree 

The vixen and the devotee, 

Revealing with each freak of feint 

The temper of Petruchio's Kate, 2 

The raptures of Siena's saint. 3 



SNOW-BOUND 15 1 

Her tapering hand and rounded wrist 

Had facile power to form a fist; 

The warm, dark languish of her eyes 

Were never safe from wrath's surprise. 

Brows saintly calm and lips devout 

Knew every change of scowl and pout; 

And the sweet voice had notes more high 

And shrill for social battle-cry. 

Since then what old cathedral town 

Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown, 

What convent-gate has held its lock 

Against the challenge of her knock! 

Through Smyrna's plague-hushed thoroughfares* 

Up sea-set Malta's rocky stairs, 

Gray olive slopes of hills that hem 

Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem, 

Or startling on her desert throne 

The crazy Queen of Lebanon l 

With claims fantastic as her own, 

Her tireless feet have held their way; 

And still, unrestful, bowed, and gray, 

She watches under Eastern skies, 

With hope each day renewed and fresh, 
The Lord's quick coming in the flesh, 

Whereof she dreams and prophesies! 

Where'er her troubled path may be, 



152 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

The Lord's sweet pity with her go! 
The outward wayward life we see, 

The hidden springs we may not know. 
Nor is it given us to discern 

What threads the fatal sisters spun, 

Through what ancestral years has run 
The sorrow with the woman born, 
» What forged her cruel chain of moods, 
What set her feet in solitudes, 

And held the love within her mute, 
What mingled madness in the blood, 

A lifelong discord and annoy, 

Water of tears with oil of joy, 
And hid within the folded bud 

Perversities of flower and fruit. 
It is not ours to separate 
The tangled skein of will and fate, 
To show what metes and bounds should stand 
Upon the soul's debatable land, 
And between choice and Providence 
Divide the circle of events; 

But He who knows our frame is just, 1 
Merciful and compassionate, 
And full of sweet assurances 
And hope for all the language is, 

That He remembereth we are dust! 



SNOW-BOUND 153 

At last ! the great logs, crumbling low, 

Sent out a dull and duller glow, 

The bull's-eye watch that hung in view, 

Ticking its weary circuit through, 

Pointed with mutely-warning sign 

Its black hand to the hour of nine. 

That sign the pleasant circle broke: 

My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke, 

Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray, 

And laid it tenderly away, 

Then roused himself to safely cover 

The dull red brand with ashes over. 

And while, with care, our mother laid 

The work aside, her steps she stayed 

One moment, seeking to express 

Her grateful sense of happiness 

For food and shelter, warmth and health, 

And love's contentment more than wealth, 

With simple wishes (not the weak, 

Vain prayers which no fulfillment seek, 

But such as warm the generous heart, 

O'er-prompt to do with Heaven its part) 

That none might lack, that bitter night, 

For bread and clothing, warmth and light. 

Within our beds awhile we heard 

The wind that round the gables roared, 



154 JOHN GREEN LEAF WHITTIER 

With now and then a ruder shock, 



Which made our very bedsteads rock. 
We heard the loosened clapboards tost, 
The board-nails snapping in the frost; 
And on us, through the unplastered wall, 
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall; 
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do 
When hearts are light and life is new; 
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew, 
Till in the summer-land of dreams 
They softened to the sound of streams, 
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars, 
And lapsing waves on quiet shores. 

Next morn we wakened with the shout 

Of merry voices high and clear; 
And saw the teamsters drawing near 
To break the drifted highways out. 
Down the long hillside treacling slow 
We saw the half-buried oxen go, 
Shaking the snow from heads uptost, 
Their straining nostrils white with frost. 
Before our door the straggling train 
Drew up, an added team to gain. 
The elders threshed their hands a-cold, 
Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes 



SNOW-BOUND 155 

From lip to lip; the younger folks 
Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling, rolled, 
Then toiled again the cavalcade 

O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine, 
And woodland paths that wound between 
Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed. 
From every barn a team afoot, 
At every house a new recruit, 
Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law, 
Haply the watchful young men saw 
Sweet doorway pictures of the curls 
And curious eyes of merry girls, 
Lifting their hands in mock defense 
Against the snow-ball's compliments, 
And reading in each missive tost * 
The charm which Eden never lost. 

We heard once more the sleigh-bells' sound; 

And, following where the teamsters led, 

The wise old Doctor went his round, 

Just pausing at our door to say, 

In the brief autocratic way 

Of one who, prompt at Duty's call, 

Was free to urge her claim on all, 

That some poor neighbor sick abed 
At night our mother's aid would need. 



156 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

For, one in generous thought and deed, 
What mattered in the sufferer's sight 
The Quaker matron's inward light, 1 

The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed? 2 

All hearts confess the saints elect 
Who, twain in faith, in love agree, 

And melt not in an acid sect 3 
The Christian pearl of charity! 

So days went on : a week had passed 
Since the great world was heard from last* 
The Almanac we studied o'er, 
Read and reread our little store 
Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score; 4 
One harmless novel, mostly hid 
From younger eyes, a book forbid, 
And poetry, (or good or bad, 
A single book was all we had,) 
Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse 5 
A stranger to the heathen Nine, 5 
Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine, 
The wars of David and the Jews. 
At last the floundering carrier bore 
The village paper 6 to our door. 
Lo! broadening outward as we read, 
To warmer zones the horizon spread; 



SNOW-BOUND 157 

In panoramic length unrolled 
We saw the marvel that it told. 
Before us passed the painted Creeks, 

And daft McGregor on his raids 

In Costa Rica's everglades. 
And up Taygetus winding slow 
Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks, 
A Turk's head at each saddle bow! 
Welcome to us its week-old news, 
Its corner for the rustic Muse, 

Its monthly gauge of snow and rain, 
Its record, mingling in a breath 
The wedding bell and dirge of death; 
Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale, 
The latest culprit sent to jail; 
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost, 
Its vendue sales and goods at cost, 

And traffic calling loud for gain. 
We felt the stir of hall and street, 
The pulse of life that round us beat; 
The chill embargo of the snow 
Was melted in the genial glow; 
Wide swung again our ice-locked door, 
And all the world was ours once more! 



*31asp, Angel, of the backward look 



158 JOHN GREEN LEAF WHIT TIER 

And folded wings of ashen gray 

And voice of echoes far away, 
The brazen covers of thy book; 
The weird palimpsest old and vast, 
Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past; 
Where, closely mingling, pale and glow 
The characters of joy and woe; 
The monographs of outlived years, 
Or smile-illumed or dim with tears, 

Green hills of life that slope to death, 
And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees 
Shade off to mournful cypresses 

With the white amaranths underneath. 
Even while I look, I can but heed 

The restless sands' incessant fall, 
Importunate hours that hours succeed, 
Each clamorous with its own sharp need, 

And duty keeping pace with all. 
Shut down and clasp the heavy lids; 
I hear again the voice that bids 
The dreamer leave his dream midway 
For larger hopes and graver fears: 
Life greatens in these later years, 
The century's aloe flowers to-day! 

Yet, haply in some lull of life, 



SNOW-BOUND 159 

Some Truce of God 1 which breaks its strife, 
The worldling's eyes shall gather dew, 

Dreaming in throngful city ways 
Of winter joys his boyhood knew; 
And dear and early friends — the few 
Who yet remain — shall pause to view 

These Flemish pictures of old days; 
Sit with me by the homestead hearth, 
And stretch the hands of memory forth 

To warm them at the wood- fire's blaze S 
And thanks untraced 2 to lips unknown 
Shall greet me like the odors blown 
From unseen meadows newly mown, 
Or lilies floating in some pond, 
Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond; 
The traveler owns the grateful sense 
Of sweetness near, he knows not whence^ 
And, pausing, takes with forehead bare 
The benediction of the air. 



NOTES 

THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 

Verse Form. You know that there are patterns or designs 
for rugs and wall papers and fancy work. So it is with poetry. 
Some recent poetry has a design or pattern that is hard to 
recognize, but poems such as most of Longfellow's and Whit- 
tier's and Lowell's are made in designs that are easily to be 
traced. Sometimes there are four accents or beats to a line 
in a poetry pattern; sometimes five. Sometimes there are 
mixtures in the same poem. In The Vision of Sir Launfal 
there are more lines with four accents than any other kind, as 

" The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice." 
You could hardly read this line aloud without noticing that 
you accented the " but " in buttercup, the " catch " in catches, 
the word sun, and the " chal " in chalice — four accents. 
Find ten other lines that go like this. 

The rhyme — that is, the correspondence or agreement in 
sound in the last syllables of lines — shows much variety in 
Sir Launfal. Take the first eight lines. You see that organist 
rhymes with list, away with lay, instrument with sent, theme 
with dream. Lowell did not tie himself down to making 
perfect rhymes. On page 30 wood and blood, which look as 
though they might rhyme, really don't; nor is chalice on 
page 31 a very good rhyme with palace two lines below; nor 
poor with door on page 36. However, when Lowell sets out 
to make a rhyme, he usually succeeds, and there is some 
pleasure in noticing the effect of rhyme in poetry. It gives 
a kind of flavor or finish that prose does not have. 

Lowell's Note on the Setting of the Poem. " According 
to the mythology of the Romancers, the San Greal, or Holy 
161 



162 NOTES 

Grail, was the cup out of which Jesus Christ partook of the 
Last Supper with His disciples. It was brought into England 
by Joseph of Arimathea, and remained there, an object of 
pilgrimage and adoration, for many years in the keeping of 
his lineal descendants. It was incumbent upon those who 
had charge of it to be chaste in thought, word, and deed; but, 
one of the keepers having broken this condition, the Holy 
Grail disappeared. From that time it was a favorite enter- 
prise of the Knights of Arthur's Court to go in search of it. 
Sir Galahad was at last successful in finding it, as may be 
read in the seventeenth book of the Romance of King Arthur. 
Tennyson has made Sir Galahad the subject of one of the 
most exquisite of his poems. 

" The plot (if I may give that name to anything so slight) 
of the following poem is my own, and, to serve its purposes, 
I have enlarged the circle of competition in search of the 
miraculous cup in such a manner as to include not only 
other persons than the heroes of the Round Table, but also 
a period of time subsequent to the date of King Arthur's 
reign." 

Ways of Enjoying the Poem. There are two different 
ways of enjoying the poem. One is to read it through and 
enjoy the vivid descriptions and the story without worrying 
about things that are beyond your comprehension. There 
is a good deal to be said in favor of this way of reading such 
a beautiful poem — beautiful in language and in sentiment — ■ 
as is The Vision of Sir Launfal. The other way, a more 
common kind of enjoyment for boys and girls just in their 
teens, is to skim the poem through and make a list of strange 
words that are hiding the full meaning of the poem. These 
are then looked up in a dictionary or in the editor's notes. 
My own boy of ten prefers to ask questions like, " Father, 
what does auroral mean? " — making me a dictionary. Your 
family may be dictionaries for you. When you know the 
words, you can read the poem to get all the images and ideas 
there are in it. 



NOTES 



163 



Some boys and girls would rather read the poem of Sir 
Launfal without taking the trouble to understand it thor- 
oughly; but some will get much more pleasure from it by 
knowing fully what it means. 

As you read the poem, see if you know what the following 
words and expressions in the Prelude to Part First mean : 



atilt 


doth 


lavish 


sap 


auroral 


dross 


lay (noun) 


shrives 


barren 


drowsy 


list 


Sinais 


benedicite 


druid 


maize 


sprouted 


booth 


dumb 


mean 


strives 


bubbles 


ebbed 


might (noun) 


tasking 


cap and bells 


fee 


murmur 


taxed 


chalice 


fervor 


musing 


theme 


chanticleer 


flush (noun) 


nice 


thrilling (verb) 


clod 


flushes 


palace 


towers (verb) 


couriers 


groping 


plot 


traitor 


craters 


heifer 


prophecies 


tries 


cringe 


high-tide 


rare 


utter 


deluge 


illumined 


ripply 


vista 



29, 1. Musing organist. I have often heard a pianist play 
a few uncertain chords before starting to play a well-known 
musical composition. Once I heard the great organist Guil- 
mant do just what Lowell pictures in the opening lines of 
the poem. Guilmant's first wavering uncertain notes were 
like the darkness which brilliantly turns into dawn, as the 
theme of the improvisation developed itself. Before begin- 
ning the story of the poem, Lowell tunes up, as it were, by 
giving a picture of the outdoor world at its first flush of 
spring-time joy. This makes a good introduction to the 
picturing of the hero of the poem in the first flush of youthful 
enthusiasm, the springtime of life. 

2. Our infancy. Wordsworth in his poem "Intimations 
of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood " 
speaks of heaven as lying about us in our infancy. 



164 NOTES 

3. Sinais. Just as Moses got close to God on Mt. Sinai, 
so we can get close to God, Lowell says, not only as children 
but as grown people, if we will appreciate the beauty and 
free gift of his wondrous outdoor natural world — the skies, 
the winds, the woods, the sea, the June day. 

4. Druid wood. The reference is to the Druids, priests 
in early days in Britain. They worshiped among oak trees. 
So the poet thinks of a great far-stretching tree as holding out 
its boughs as if in the act of bestowing a blessing. 

30, 1. A cap and bells. The sign of a court fool or jester. 
We give our lives for foolish things, says the poet, whereas 
without giving anything we can have God's gift of June. 

31, 1. Meadows green. It is often a trick of poets to put 
an adjective after a noun like this. One of Lowell's early 
favorites, Milton, often does this in his shorter poems. 

2. Nice. This is a perfect use of the word. 

32, 1. Couriers. One of the pleasures in reading the poem 
is to see the poet's art in bringing into his descriptions impres- 
sions not of sight only but of smell and touch or hearing. 
By impressions from these various senses we have the an- 
nouncement made to us that spring is here. 

33, 1. Craters. Another of the pleasures in reading the 
poem is in observing the attractive and sometimes curious 
comparisons. Anger and trouble, the poet says, make ugly 
holes in our lives. Spring covers these up, just as snow may 
cover up the crater of an old volcano. 

2. Richest mail. The Metropolitan Museum in New 
York has specimens of richly polished and ornamented armor 
worn by knights hundreds of years ago. The polished metal 
was often inlaid with patterns of gold and jewels. See also 
gilded mail. 

3. Rushes. In humility before beginning his search, the 
knight lay down on the rushes, the covering of the floor of 
his castle. 

34, 1. North Countree. Perhaps in England. See Lowell's 
note on the setting (p. 162). 



NOTES 165 

2. Pavilions. The tall trees which tried to overcome the 
cold bareness of the castle which they surrounded. They 
are referred to also as tents. 

3. Charger. A spirited horse, a war-horse. The poem 
combines word pictures of older days of chivalry with senti- 
ments about the equality of men that are peculiar to modern 
times. 

4. Maiden knight. A knight who had not yet done knightly 
deeds — young, untried, unharmed. 

5. Three hundred summers. A poetical way of telling 
the age of the castle. 

35, 1 . Locust leaf. Do the small delicate leaflets on a locust 
tree seem always lightly quivering? Note the device for 
poetic beauty in the line — all the Vs. 

2. Made morn. In his bright armor, Sir Launfal in his 
vision shone like the morning light in the midst of the dark- 
ness of the gloomy castle. 

3. 'Ware. Another of the pleasures in the reading of the 
poem is the discovery of the numerous quaint, old-fashioned 
words such as these: 'ware, 'neath, 'gan, ere, doth, sate, 
lightsome, darksome, swound. Old ballads have many such 
expressions. Leper: leprosy is a contagious disease which 
used to be greatly feared. It is under control now and cases 
are rare, although there are a few lepers in the United States 
at present. 

37, 1. Five thousand summers old. This is much more 
interesting than very old or immemorially old, or some such 
term. 

2. All the cold. Just as a description of June set the tone 
for the vision of the knight starting out, so the description 
of December sets the tone for the knight's sorrowful return 
in his vision after his apparently fruitless search for the Grail. 
Lowell made his description of the brook from an actual 
winter scene that deeply impressed him one night. 

38, 1. Ice-fern leaf. The delicate tracery of the ice on 
the brook looked like ferns. 



166 NOTES 

2. Mortal builder's. An allusion to a great ice palace 
built by a Russian empress. 

3. Cheeks of Christmas. How could they grow red? 

4. Corbel. How would Lowell know the architectural 
words of the poem? 

5. Flame-pennons droop. A person who likes to look at 
an open fire in a fkeplace would do well to memorize these 
14 lines beginning with " Within the hall." 

40, 1. The cross. Knights in the Crusades wore the sign 
of the cross. 

41, 1. Rain-blanched bone. Classes always ask me what 
this means. Have you ever seen a bone that has been long 
lying out in the yard exposed to rain and all kinds of weather 
— made white and marrowless? 

43, 1. The Beautiful Gate. " The gate of the temple 
which is called Beautiful " (Acts 3:2), where Peter healed the 
lame man. 

THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 

47, 1. In the Old Colony days: Beginning with a fairly 
definite time reference, followed by a definite place reference 
and the mention of a historical person, Longfellow suggests 
at once the atmosphere of his poem, and puts the reader in 
the frame of mind to follow the narrative of events in the 
life of Captain Miles Standish of Plymouth Colony. The 
poem, being narrative, is thus seen at the start to belong to 
the general class called epic, to which belong such poems as 
Longfellow's "Hiawatha" and "Evangeline " and Scott's 
"Lady of the Lake". Compare note 37, 2. 

2. Cordovan: In the Spanish town of Cordova the manu- 
facture of goatskin leather was an important industry. 

3. Miles Standish: The Plymouth captain is not neces- 
sarily the hero, even though the poem takes his name for 
its title. Yet, if by hero is meant the central male character 
of a story, i. e., the character around whom the action of the 
narrative centers, surely Standish is the hero of this poem, 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 167 

for his proxy courtship is the basis for the story and his 
actions give structure to the poem. 

As a matter of history, Captain Standish was thirty-six 
years old when the Mayflower reached Plymouth, but the 
poet, using history for the purpose of literary art, makes the 
Puritan captain seem older than thirty-six. Near the site 
of Standish's house at Duxbury, near Plymouth (in Massa- 
chusetts), there has been erected a monument 110 feet high, 
surmounted by a statue. 

The historical basis for the poem can be easily under- 
stood from the following extract from Anderson's Grammar 
School History of the United States : 

" The first permanent settlement of New England was by 
a small band of Pilgrims, dissenters from the Church of Eng- 
land, who had fled from their own country to find an asylum 
from religious persecution. They were known in England as 
Puritans. 

" They at first went to Amsterdam, in Holland, whence 
they removed to Leyden t At Leyden they lived eleven years 
in great harmony, under the pastoral care of John Robinson; 
but, from various causes, they became dissatisfied with their 
residence, and desired to plant a colony in America, where 
they might enjoy their civic and religious rights without 
molestation. 

" As many as could be accommodated embarked on board 
a vessel called the Speedwell. The ship sailed to Southamp- 
ton, England, where she was joined by another ship called 
the Mayflower, with other Pilgrims from London. The two 
vessels set sail, but had not gone far before the Speedwell 
was found to need repairs, and they entered the port of Dart- 
mouth, England. A second time they started, but again put 
back — this time to Plymouth, where the Speedwell was 
abandoned as unseaworthy. 

" The Mayflower finally sailed alone, with about one hun- 
dred passengers, the most distinguished of whom were John 
Carver, William Brewster, Miles Standish, William Bradford, 



168 NOTES 

and Edward Winslow. After a boisterous passage they 
reached Cape Cod Bay; and there, in the cabin of the May- 
flower, they signed a compact for their government, and 
unanimously elected Carver Governor for one year. 

" Several days were spent in searching for a favorable 
locality At length, on the 21st of December, 1620, they 
landed at a place which they called Plymouth, in memory 
of the hospitalities which had been bestowed upon them at 
the last English port from which they had sailed. The 
winter was severe, and in less than five months nearly half 
of that Pilgrim band died from the effects of exposure and 
privations, Carver and his wife being among the number. 
Bradford was thereupon elected Governor, and he continued 
during thirty years to be a prominent man in the Colony." 

48, 1. Sword of Damascus: Since the poem deals with 
real and fictitious incidents of nearly three hundred years 
ago, it is natural that there should be in the descriptions a 
number of unfamiliar terms. Standish's weapons and armor 
need explanation: the cutlass was a short, curved sword; the 
corselet, a breastplate of armor; sword of Damascus, a sword 
made of the fine steel for which the Syrian city of Damascus 
was famous — such swords were often inscribed with a 
sentence from the Koran; fowling-piece, a light gun for 
shooting birds; musket, a war gun which was in colonial 
times fired by means of a slow-match of twisted rope, but 
which is now fired by a spring lock; matchlock, originally the 
lock of a musket, but later the gun itself. Some of the other 
peculiar words found in the poem will be defined, but many 
will be left for the ingenuity and the patience of the student 
to master in an unabridged dictionary like Webster's Inter- 
national, the Century, the Standard, or, so far as completed, 
the invaluable New English Dictionary, probably the best 
dictionary ever made in any language. 

2. Curved at the : There has been much adverse criticism 
of Longfellow's meter, as being monotonous in its easy swing. 
Yet it is really this easy motion that makes the poem so 



THE .COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 169 

fascinating as it is to persons just learning the pleasures of 
poetry. The lines have six accents, the number of unac- 
cented syllables varying. In general the feet, except for the 
sixth, are dactylic; the sixth is trochaic. Yet the variations 
from dactylic in the first five feet are sufficiently numerous 
to prevent the poem from being monotonously regular. The 
ninth line is an example of the normal meter — five dactylic 
feet followed by one trochaic, six accents in all; but this is 
the first entirely normal line in the poem, for in each of the 
first eight lines there are some substitutions for dactylic 
feet, usually trochaic feet. 

3. John Alden : Twenty-one years old when the colony 
was founded. 

49, 1. Not Angles : The Angles were one of the Germanic 
tribes that emigrated from the Continent to England; they 
gave their name to England. English historians are fond of 
telling the story to which Longfellow alludes. It is enter- 
tainingly told in the following extract from Merrill's English 
History : 

" It was in the year 597 that the first missionaries to the 
Saxons landed in Britain. They were sent by Pope Gregory 
the Great. Before he became Pope his pity had been moved 
by the sight of some Saxon children, sold for slaves in the 
market-place of Rome. ' Who are these beautiful boys? ' 
asked Gregory; ' and are they Christian children? ' ' No/ 
said the slave-merchant; ' they are Angles, and come from a 
heathen land.' Gregory was grieved and answered, ' If they 
were Christians, they would be angels, not Angles' (NonAngli, 
sed Angeli)." 

2. scribe: Frequently Longfellow employs a curiously 
involved word order which obscures the syntax of his sen- 
tence. In cases of doubt about his meaning, put the sen- 
tence into natural prose word order, and the difficulty will 
vanish; as for instance, here: Suddenly breaking the silence, 
Miles Standish, the Captain of Plymouth, interrupting the 
diligent scribe, spoke in the pride of his heart. By this 



170 NOTES 

change, it becomes apparent instantly that " scribe " is the 
object of the participle " interrupting." It would be a pity- 
to spend much time on the grammar of this poem except in 
such cases as the above, where the solution of the grammatical 
puzzle at once clears up the meaning. 

3. Flanders: The Netherlands. Compare the adjective 
Flemish, pages 49 and 159. 

4. Arcabucero : Spanish word for archer, here meaning 
musketeer. By scanning the line, you can readily determine 
the pronunciation of the difficult word. 

50, 1. "Truly the breath," etc.: Compare Psalms xxxiii, 
6 and 20. 

2. Serve yourself: By Standish's first few speeches the 
poet conveys a distinct idea of the kind of man the captain 
was. Vivid characterization is a leading merit of the poem. 
The early introduction of the famous short, wise saying or 
adage of Captain Standish produces a humorous effect when 
the reader comes to what follows. This frolicsome humor 
shown in the poem is another of its merits, for truly the 
Pilgrim life was not all gloom. 

3. Rest : A support for the gun when being fired. 

51, 1. Laughed: Why did he laugh? 

2. Preacher: The figure of speech by which the poet 
speaks of a howitzer, or small cannon, as a preacher is called 
metaphor. What other implied comparisons do you notice 
in the poem? 

3. Sagamore : What is the effect of the introduction of 
the Indian words and names ? A sagamore was a leader of 
one of the subdivisions of a tribe; a sachem, the chief of a 
tribe; a pow-wow, a medicine-man or conjuror. Aspinet, Sa- 
moset, etc., were real names mentioned in early chronicles ©f 
Plymouth. 

4. Forest: Syntax? 

52, 1. Three: The condensation of poetry has already 
been mentioned, 38, 3. How do you explain the construc- 
tion of " three "? 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 171 

53, 1. Barriffe's Artillery Guide : Colonel William Barriffe, 
a Puritan soldier, wrote a book entitled Militarie Discipline; 
or, The Young Artillery Man. 

2. Commentaries of Caesar: Not knowing Latin, the 
captain read in a translation by an English scholar the com-' 
mentaries written by Julius Caesar on his wars with the Gauls. 
The account of the battle alluded to is in Section 10 of the 
second book of Caesar's commentaries. 

3. Thumb-marks thick: Alliteration. 

54, 1. Homeward bound : The time when the chief events 
of the poem happened is exactly fixed by this historical 
reference. The Mayflower sailed homeward April 5, 1621. 

55, 1. ' Better be first,' etc.: This is a fact of history, as 
can be verified by referring to Plutarch's life of Caesar. 
Iberian means Spanish. 

56, 1. Nothing was heard, etc.: Is the repetition of this 
line a blemish? 

57, 1. Priscilla: Can you imagine to whom Alden was 
writing the letters, and what he said in them about Priscilla? 
Note the poet's method of introducing the name of the heroine 
of the poem by intimating that Alden is in love with her. 

58, 1. The Scriptures: See Genesis ii, 18. 

2. Alone in the world: " Mr, Molines, and his wife, his 
sone and his servant, dyed the first winter. Only his daugh- 
ter Priscilla survived and married with John Alden, who are 
both living and have 11 children." (Bradford's History of 
Plymouth Plantation.) 

59, 1. Taciturn: Reserved, silent. Used in its original 
sense as derived from the Latin. 

60, 1. Just as a timepiece: So many comparisons occur 
in the poem that before the end the effect is tiresome. The 
poet seems to strain after comparisons. What others do you 
discover? 

2. Maxim: Observe on pages 50 and 124 a word equiva- 
lent to " maxim." 

62, 1. So the strong will prevailed. Compare page 61. 



172 NOTES 

2. Hanging gardens: An allusion to the hanging gardens 
of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the world. Does 
Longfellow's nature description seem to have the real spirit 
of the woods, or does it seem written from the library? 

63, 1. Followed the flying feet: Is this a hint that Alden 
loved Priscilla before the Pilgrims left England? 

2. Astaroth . . . Baal: Ashtoreth was goddess of love, and 
Baal the chief god in the Phoenician worship referred to in 
Judges ii, 13, 1 Samuel xii, 10, and 1 Kings xi, 1-5. Note 
Alden's Puritanical repression of his own natural emotions. 

64, 1. Children: Metaphor. The poet speaks of the may- 
flowers as children lost in the woods. 

65, 1. Carded wool: In the process of spinning, the wool 
was first picked clear of specks and burs. Then it was carded, 
that is, combed out into straight lengths, the card being 
something like the currycomb used in cleaning horses. After 
being carded, the wool was pure white. 

2. Old Puritan anthem : In the picture of colonial life the 
poet has introduced here a most characteristic touch. The 
Psalms, strong and rugged in words and music, were what 
the Pilgrims liked in their meeting-houses and in their home 
singing. That stirring exhortation to praise the Lord, viz., 
the hundredth Psalm, with music going back to the time of 
Luther, the German reformer, was a favorite song as trans- 
lated by Henry Ainsworth. Persecuted in England, Ains- 
worth in 1590 fled to Holland. Many of his commentaries 
and translations were " Imprinted at Amsterdam." 

66, 1. Life: Syntax? 

2. Hand to the plow : Luke ix, 62. 

3. Mercy endureth forever: Jeremiah xxxiii, 11. 

72, 1. Hugh Standish: Compare page 123. A paragraph 
from Young's Chronicles of the Pilgrims throws light on Long- 
fellow's allusion to the ancestry of Miles Standish: " There 
are at this time in England two ancient families of the name, 
one of Standish Hall, and the other of Duxbury Park, both 
in Lancashire, who trace their descent from a common 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STAN DISH 173 

ancestor, Ralph de Standish, living in 1221. There seems 
always to have been a military spirit in the family. Frois- 
sart, relating in his Chronicles the memorable meeting between 
Richard II and Wat Tyler, says that after the rebel was 
struck from his horse by William Walworth, ' then a squyer 
of the kynges alyted, called John Standysshe, and he drewe 
out his sworde, and put into Wat Tyler's belye, and so he 
dyed.' For this act Standish was knighted. In 1415 an- 
other Sir John Standish fought at the battle of Agincourt. 
From his giving the name of Duxbury to the town where he 
settled, near Plymouth, and calling his eldest son Alexander 
(a common name in the Standish family) I have no doubt 
that Miles was a scion from this ancient and warlike stock." 
2. Family arms : Longfellow's description of the Standish 
family arms is difficult, for the words used in heraldry are 
strange. The coat of arms consisted of crest, shield, and 
motto. The crest was the ornament worn above the shield 
on the helmet. In the Standish coat of arms the crest was 
a cock argent, i.e., silver in color except for the comb, which 
was the fleshly tuft growing on the cock's head, and the 
wattle, which was the fleshly wrinkled excrescence growing 
under the throat of the cock. Both comb and wattle were 
gules, that is, red. The rest of the blazon, or coat of arms, 
is not given. 

73, 1. "Why don't you speak for yourself , John? " This 
question has been so often quoted that it has become a part 
of the language and is often used by persons who when they 
employ it have no consciousness of its source in this poem. 

74, 1. John Alden: The first character in this part is 
John Alden. See the similar opening of Parts II, III, and 
VI. Because of this putting of Alden to the front and letting 
him win the hand of Priscilla, some critics call him the hero 
of the poem. 

2. Apocalyptical splendors: That is, glories described by 
St. John in the Book of Revelation. See especially Revela- 
tion xxi, 10, 11, and 15. 

; 



174 NOTES 

75, 1. Dulse: A kind of sea-weed. Other words having 
the flavor of old New England days are: " merestead " and 
"glebe," page 113. 

2. David's trangression : See 2 Samuel xi and xii. 

77, 1. Walls of its waters: See the story of the escape of 
the Israelites from Egyptian bondage, Exodus xiii and xiv, 
especially the twenty-first and twenty-second verses of the 
fourteenth chapter. 

2. Her: Syntax? 

78, 1. Seven houses: What other details do you notice 
descriptive of Plymouth? Try to form as distinct a picture 
as possible. 

2. Hainault or Brabant : Counties of the Netherlands. 

79, 1. Sped: That is, prospered, succeeded. 

80, 1. Wat Tyler: See note 72, 1. Observe how Standish 
in his anger contemptuously compares Alden with the traitor 
Wat Tyler. 

2. You, too, Brutus: For this allusion consult Shake- 
speare's Julius Ccesar. What have you observed thus far 
regarding the nature and range of Longfellow's allusions? 

81, 1. Alden was left alone: The sentence length is here 
skilfully varied. Be observant of such variations. 

2. Father who seeth in secret: Matthew vi, 4. 

82, 1. The hill: Metaphor. Elder Brewster is spoken 
of as a snow-covered hill near to heaven. Brewster was 
the ruling elder of the Plymouth church and preached 
when John Robinson, the teaching elder or pastor, was ab- 
sent. 

2. The chronicles old : In this case the old chronicle con- 
taining the sentence about the sifting of three kingdoms is 
an election sermon of 1668 by Stoughton. 

3. The skin : Actually the incident occurred in 1622, when 
Canonicus, a chief of the Narragansett tribe, sent an Indian 
named Tisquantum to Governor Bradford with a rattlesnake 
skin filled with arrows. The latter returned it filled with 
powder and bullets. 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 175 

83, 1. Voice of the Elder : John Robinson. The incident is 
historical. 

85, 1 . A stir and a sound : The first forty lines of Part V are 
a general description of the actions of the Plymouth people 
on the morning of the sailing of the Mayflower; the particular 
courtship story is resumed on page 88. 

2. Mighty men of King David : 2 Samuel xxiii, 8. 

86, 1. Serried: Are you interested in Longfellow's vivid, 
specific words? 

87, 1. Beautiful were his feet: Adapted from the seventh 
verse of Chapter lii of Isaiah. 

88, 1. In the desert: Compare page 103. 

90, 1. Spake: Archaic for spoke. What is the purpose in 
the use of archaic words in the poem? 

2. Stephen and Richard and Gilbert : Their last names were 
Hopkins, Warren, and Winslow. 

3. Plymouth Rock : Consult note on the fourth line of the 
poem. At the present time in Plymouth a fragment of this 
flat granite rock is enclosed by a railing and protected by a 
canopy; the rock itself is covered by a wharf. 

4. Master: Captain. 

91, 1. Gunwale : Are you interested in this and in the 
other technical nautical words — "thwarts" and "keel," 
page 91; "windlass," "yards," and "braced," page 94? 

92, 1. " Here I remain " : Do you call this the climax of 
the poem? 

94, 1. Set his hand: See note 66, 2. 

2. The Gurnet: Gurnet's Nose is a headland at the en- 
trance of Plymouth harbor. 

3. Field of the First Encounter: The poet's appropriation 
of phrases from old chronicles is well illustrated here. A 
scouting party of Pilgrims landed from the Mayflower ahead 
of the rest. In Bradford and Winslow's journal quoted h? 
Young's Chronicles there is mention of an engagement be- 
tween this scouting party and a band of Indians: " So aftei 
we had given God thanks for our deliverance, we took om 



176 NOTES 

shallop and went on our journey, and called this place The 
First Encounter." 

95, 1. Took courage: Acts xxviii, 15. 

96, 1. Spirit of God: Genesis i, 2: " And the earth was 
without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of 
the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the 
waters." How do you account for Longfellow's making so 
many quotations from the Bible? 

99, 1. "No!" In reading Part VI aloud, boys and girls 
«eem hugely to enjoy making this "No" very emphatic. 

100, 1. Like the beautiful rivers: Adapted from Genesis 
ii, 10. 

104, 1. Direful wrath: Compare Homer's Iliad, line 1: 

Sing, O muse, the direful wrath of Achilles. 

2. Manner was changed: In writing on the character of 
Priscilla, include mention of her fascinating changes in 
manner. 

3. Holy Land : An allusion to the journeyings of the 
Crusaders to the sepulchre of the Saviour. 

107, 1. Friendship was, etc.: An interesting sentence, in 
which emphasis is gained by the word order. 

2. Goliath . . . Og: 1 Samuel xvii, 4, and Deuteronomy 
Hi, 11. 

3. Wampum: Beads made by North American Indians 
from colored shells. 

108, 1. Wattawamat: "Among the rest Wituwamat 
bragged of the excellency of his knife. On the end of the 
handle there was pictured a woman's face: ' but,' said he, 
' I have another at home wherewith I have killed both French 
and English, and that hath a man's face on it, and by and 
by these two must marry.' Further he said of that knife he 
there had, Hinnaim namen, hinnaim michen, matta cuts; 
that is to say, By and by it should see, and by and by it 
should eat, but not speak. Also Pecksuot, being a man of 
greater stature than the captain, told him, though he were a 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STAN DISH 177 

great captain, yet he was but a little man; and, said he, 

* though I be no sachem, yet I am a man of great strength 
and courage.' " (Winslow's Relation of Standish's Expedi- 
tion.) 

110, 1. The boaster: That is, Pecksuot. 

111, 1. Out of the lightning thunder: Light travels faster 
than sound. 

2. Hobomok: " Hobbamock stood by all this time as a 
spectator, and meddled not, observing how our men de- 
meaned themselves in this action. All being here ended, 
smiling, he brake forth into these speeches to the Captain: 

* Yesterday Pecksuot, bragging of his own strength and 
stature, said, though you were a great captain, yet you were 
but a little man; but to-day I see that you are big enough to 
lay him on the ground.' " (Winslow's Relation.) The poet 
has shortened the time; in the poem no day intervenes 
between the insult and the blow. 

113, 1. The ships . . . came: This is another definite 
historical reference dating the time when the imaginary 
incidents of the poem are supposed to have occurred and 
helping to determine the amount of time elapsing in the 
narrative. The ships, Anne and Little James, arrived at 
Plymouth in August, 1623. 

2. Waxing valiant in fight : Hebrews xi, 34. 

114, 1. To this day: The descendants of John Alden still 
own the land where his house stood in Duxbury, on the 
Massachusetts coast, thirty-eight miles southeast of Boston. 
On the old homestead site the Alden descendants gather from 
many parts of the country each year for a family reunion. 

115, 1. In the Proverbs: See the portion of the thirty- 
first chapter of Proverbs descriptive of the virtuous woman. 

117, 1. Bertha . . . Helvetia: Bertha, the housewifely 
queen of a Burgundian king whose territory included Hel- 
vetia (Switzerland), is represented on monuments as seated 
on her throne in the act of spinning. 

120, 1. Put them asunder: Adapted from the Biblical 



178 NOTES 

sentence, " What therefore God hath joined together, let 
not man put asunder," found in Matthew xix, 6, and Mark x, 9. 

121, 1. The sun : Compare the description of the sun, page 
87. See also the description of the high priest in the Bible 
— Exodus xxviii, 34-36. 

2. That of Ruth and of Boaz : Ruth iv, 11 and 12. 

122, 1. Laudable custom of Holland: Longfellow quotes 
the phrase from Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation: 
" May 12 was the first marriage in this place, which, accord- 
ing to the laudable custome of the Low-Countries, in which 
they had lived, was thought most requisite to be performed 
by the magistrate, as being a civil thing, upon which many 
questions aboute inheritances doe depende, with other things 
most proper to their cognizans, and most consonante to the 
scripturs, Ruth iv, and no wher found in the gospell to be 
layed on the ministers as a part of their office." 

123, 1. Rack: Vapor. 

124, 1. Kent: A county in the southern part of England. 

127, 1. Pleased with the image: What other instances 
have you found where the poet has attributed the emotions 
of men to inanimate objects? 

2. Valley of Eshcol : Numbers xiii, 23. 

128, 1. Rebecca and Isaac: Genesis xxiv, 64. 

2. Old and yet ever new : The simple themes drawn from 
the universal experiences of men are the ones that in litera- 
ture are the most popular. That is one reason why Long- 
fellow's "Courtship of Miles Standish" has been so widely 
read. It is a true picture of colonial days in New England, 
but more than this it is a narrative of human experiences 
that seem true to nature no matter whether the Puritan life 
is understood by the reader or not. 



SNOW-BOUND 179 

SNOW-BOUND 

129, 1. A Winter Idyl: In form, Whittier's poem, like 
Poe's and unlike Longfellow's, is personal. It aims not to tell 
a particular story, but to give a picture of the life of Whittier's 
family during a winter storm. In presenting this specific 
picture, the poet has been so true to family life that for two 
generations men everywhere who have been familiar with 
rustic scenes and people have exclaimed on the reality of 
Whittier's description. Aiming to describe just what he 
knew himself, his own household, he has succeeded in making 
a description that seems universal. Yet he has chosen to 
depict his characters in action rather than at rest. Since the 
family was kept indoors by the snow, it seems natural that 
the idyl should cover several days, as it does; the main action 
covers three days with the two intervening nights, but the 
whole time mentioned is a week. Over four hundred of the 
seven hundred and fifty-nine lines of the poem are, however, 
devoted to the characterization of the family gathered about 
the " clean-winged hearth," one evening. It is an ideal 
picturing of the life of an old-fashioned country home. This 
poem, then, called by Whittier a winter idyl and often referred 
to as a pastoral poem, may be considered lyric in character. 

The versification is simple. Most of the lines are regular 
iambic tetrameter, rhyming in couplets. Occasionally the 
lines begin with a trochaic instead of with an iambic foot, 
and there are infrequent substitutions for iambic feet in other 
parts of a line, as on page 141, where the second foot of the 
twelfth line is a spondee. Occasionally, too, three lines in 
succession, as on page 133, rhyme; or there is a line which 
jumps over a couplet to rhyme with the line that follows the 
couplet, for instance, drew, low, snow, and through, on page 
132. The student will discover for himself a few other 
irregularities in the rhyme scheme. There has been adverse 
criticism of the nature of the rhymes. The ears of critics are 
offended by such harsh rhymes as on and sun, page 131; 



180 NOTES 

breath and path, page 132; mute and foot, page 133. But in 
both meter and rhyme the poem is for the most part simple 
and pleasing. 

2. Occult philosophy : What is the use of introducing the 
poem by such a quotation as this? 

3. That brief December day: From this time reference 
are you misled into thinking that the poem will be a story? 

130, 1. Homespun stuff: Compare page 139. The poet 
explains in a brief autobiographical letter, written in 1882, 
that his mother, in addition to her ordinary house duties, kept 
busy spinning and weaving the linen and woolen cloth 
needed in the family. 

2. Coming: As in "The Raven" and "The Courtship," 
when a sentence seems difficult to understand it is well to 
try turning the words into an ordinary prose order; for 
example, told the coming of the snow-storm. Try this with 
any sentences that puzzle you at your first reading. After 
thus re-phrasing the sentences, you will be ready to express 
an opinion concerning the simplicity or the complexity, the 
clearness or the obscurity, of Whittier's sentences. You will 
know whether to call Whittier a smooth, cultured writer or 
an unpolished, homespun poet. 

3. Heard the roar: The Whittier home, a short walk 
from Haverhill on the road to Salisbury, in the northeastern 
corner of Massachusetts, was within sound of the sea. 

4. Stanchion: The description of the barn is wonderfully 
vivid. It strikes so many chords of memory that no matter 
how many times the person who has seen such places reads 
the description he thrills with enjoyment of the memories. 
Are you familiar with all the words used in the description ? 

5. Crested: Compare note 72, 2. 

6. Querulous : Poets often assign to inanimate objects or 
to the lower animals the emotions and thoughts of men. 
Here Whittier has used subjective description in saying that 
the cock sent a querulous challenge. Is the same true of 
"lusty greeting," on page 133? 



SNOW-BOUND 181 

131, 1. Like . . . ghosts: Likening the clothes-line posts 
to ghosts, Whittier has used a simile, while Poe in line 8 of 
" The Raven," likening the ember to a ghost, used a metaphor. 
What difference do you notice between simile and metaphor? 
Some of Whittier's figures of speech, like some of Longfellow's 
notable sentences, have become a part of the popular language 
and are used familiarly without consciousness of their origin. 

2. Spherule: If you were describing a snow-storm, 
would you use such words as "spherule," "geometric," 
"pellicle," and "meteor"? Since Whittier had little school- 
ing, are you not surprised that he knew such words? How 
do you suppose he learned them, and what do they mean? 

132, 1. Mound: Attribute complement of "showed." 
What difference did the snow make in the appearance of 
familiar objects near the house ? 

2. Pisa's leaning miracle : Seven miles from the mouth 
of the river Arno in Italy, is the city of Pisa, best known the 
world over for its strange leaning tower built in 1350. The 
tower, 179 feet high, is 24 feet off the perpendicular; the 
cause of the leaning was perhaps an earthquake during the 
building of the tower, but Prof. W. H. Goodyear of Brook- 
lyn declares that it' was built originally as it now stands. 

3. Our father: The brisk characterization of the father in 
this poem and the appreciative characterizations of the other 
members of the household show the absurdity of such sweep- 
ing condemnation of Whittier as this by one critic: "His 
characters, where he introduces such, are commonly abstrac- 
tions with little of the flesh and blood of real life in them." 
In "Snow-Bound," at least, Whittier has presented real 
persons, not abstractions. 

4. Buskins: Foot-coverings extending half-way to the 
knee. Several hundred years before Whittier's time, the 
word buskin was used to describe the high-heeled, thick- 
soled shoes worn by tragic actors. 

5. Aladdin's wondrous cave : Old and young, school-boys 
and learned scholars, enjoy the tales of the Arabian nights. 



182 NOTES 

The one referred to by Whittier tells about the wonderful 
rfamp of Aladdin. 

133, 1. Amun: Ammon, an Egyptian god often repre- 
sented as a ram. 

2. Church-bell: In his autobiographical letter, Whittier 
says that the sound of the two church-bells of Haverhill 
could be heard in the lonely homestead on Sundays. 

3. Solitude: Syntax? 

134, 1. Minded: Regarded with attention, noticed, 
observed. 

2. Buried brooklet: In his prose works Whittier often 
refers to the little brook that ran near the farmhouse. Here 
is one of his descriptions: " Our old homestead nestled under 
a long range of hills which stretched off to the west. It was 
surrounded by woods in all directions save to the southeast 
where a break in the leafy wall revealed a vista of low green 
meadows, picturesque with wooded islands and jutting capes 
of upland. Through these a small brook, noisy enough as it 
foamed, rippled, and laughed down its rocky falls by our 
garden-side, wound, silently and scarcely visible, to a still 
larger stream, known as the Country Brook. This brook in 
its turn, after doing duty at two or three saw and grist mills, 
the clack of which we could hear in still days across the inter- 
vening woodlands, found its way to the great river [the Merri- 
mac], and the river took up and bore it down to the great sea 
[the Atlantic Ocean]." (From "The Fish I Didn't Catch.") 

3. Wooded knolls : See note 134, 2. 

135, 1. Crane . . . trammels: The "crane" was the 
horizontal arm to which hooks called "trammels" were 
attached for holding kettles or other vessels over the fire in 
the open fireplace. 

2. Andirons : Iron horizontal supports on which the 
sticks or logs rested. "Andirons" were often wrought out 
into fantastic shapes, such as heads of Turks. 

136, 1. Clean-winged hearth: Though familiar to grand- 
fathers of Yankee origin, such expressions as this are entirely 



SNOW-BOUND 183 

outside the experience of young people of to-day and conse- 
quently need explanation. In olden days the wing of a fowl, 
usually a turkey wing, was placed beside the hearth for brush- 
ing back the ashes and keeping the hearth clean. 

2. Frost-line : Have you ever seen how the fire even in a 
coal-stove will gradually dissipate the frost on a window- 
pane? 

3. Silhouette : In the description of the scene around the 
hearth, what bookish words and what homely, colloquial 
words does the poet use? The difficulties of Whittier's vo- 
cabulary are caused by the use either of somewhat bookish 
words or of homely words descriptive of a life fast fading 
away. It is interesting to collect examples of both kinds of 
Whittier's words. 

4. Meet: Suitable. What does this adjective modify? 

5. Brown October's: A phrase reminiscent of the old- 
ballads of which Whittier was fond. 

137, 1. Thou: W T hittier was a Quaker. See page 21. 

2. Voices of that hearth are still: Compare note 146, 1. 
This tone of memory, this expression of long-gathered emo- 
tions, this personal element, makes the poem clearly lyric - 
rather than epic. 

3. Cypress- trees : Symbols of mourning. The lines might 
be paraphrased thus: That person is to be pitied who in his 
mourning cannot see hope beyond in heaven. 

138, 1. Marbles: Marble monuments in a cemetery. 

2. Sped the time: Pages 138-153 give the stories told' 
around the fire. 

3. " The chief of Gambia's," etc. This line is from a poem 
by Mrs. Sarah Wentworth Morton, which appeared in Caleb- 
Bingham's The American Preceptor, a popular school-book of 
the time. 

4. Slavery's shaping hand : Compare page 149. Regard- 
ing Whittier's part in the anti-slavery movement, see page 22. 
A few years after the publication of " Snow-Bound," the poet 
edited the journal of John Woolman, a Quaker who before 



184 NOTES 

the Revolutionary War wrote quaintly but eloquently against 
slavery. The italicized lines which Whittier says were like a 
trumpet call are from a poem by Mrs. Mercy Warren, wife of 
a Revolutionary patriot of Massachusetts. 

5. Memphremagog : This lake, the name of which means 
" beautiful water," lies one-fifth in Vermont and four-fifths 
in Canada. It is described by Baedeker as enclosed by rocky 
shores and wooded hills. 

6. Samp : Coarse hominy. A word like this helps to re- 
produce the atmosphere of the curious stories of travel told 
by the father. 

7. St. Francois' : Lake St. Francis is an expansion of the 
St. Lawrence River. At the bottom of page 138 and the top 
of page 139 are given the father's memories of his Canadian 
horseback journey, when he camped with trappers and Indians 
and enjoyed the life in the French-Canadian villages. 

8. Norman cap and bodiced zone : Descriptions of the 
head-gear and dresses of the French-Canadian dancers. 

139, 1. Salisbury's level marshes: The salt marshes of 
Salisbury are over the New Hampshire line, but are, like the 
Isles of Shoals where the father fished, near the Massachusetts 
farm of the Whittiers. 

2. Swept, scythe, etc.: An alliterative line. 

3. Boar's Head: A bluff on the New Hampshire coast, 
not far from the Whittier farm. The Isles of Shoals (see page 
25) are nine rocky islands off Boar's Head, frequented as 
summer resorts because of their pure sea-air and freedom 
from mosquitoes. 

140, 1. Cochecho town: The city of Dover, New Hamp- 
shire, settled in 1623, lies on the Cocheco River. 

2. She made us welcome: That is, she told the hearth' 
side group nil about her early home. What lines give the 
mother's contribution to the talk? What idea do you form 
in your mind of the appearance and characteristics of the 
mother? 

3. Piscataqua: A New Hampshire river. 



SNOW-BOUND 185 

141, 1. Some tale she gave: Compare the nature of the 
tales told by the mother with those told by the father. 

2. Sewel's ancient tome : William Sewel was a Dutch 
Quaker whose History of the Quakers was translated into 
English and several times reprinted. 

3. Faith fire-winged: In the early days of the Quaker 
faith in* England and the colonies, large numbers of its 
adherents were burned to death or hanged. 

4. Chalkley's Journal, old and quaint : Thomas Chalkley 
was a Quaker preacher who was born in 1675. The greater 
part of his life he spent in traveling about New England and 
the southern colonies preaching. The quaint character of 
his Journal, published kThis seventy-second year, is evident 
in the following extract: "To stop their murmuring, I told 
them they should not need to cast lots, which was usual in 
such cases, which of us should die first, for I would freely 
offer up my life to do them good. One said, ' God bless you! 
I will not eat any of you.' Another said he would die before 
he would eat any of me, and so said several. I can truly 
say, on that occasion, at that time, my life was not dear to 
me, and that I was serious and ingenuous in my proposition;, 
and as I was leaning over the side of the vessel, thoughtfully 
considering my proposal to the company, and looking in my 
mind to Him that made me, a very large dolphin came up 
towards the top or surface of the water and looked me in the 
face; and I called the people to put a hook into the sea and 
take him, for here is one come to redeem me (I said to them). 
And they put a hook into the sea, and the fish readily took 
it, and they caught him. He was longer than myself. I 
think he was about six feet long, and the largest that ever I 
saw. This plainly showed us that we ought not to distrust 
the providence of the Almighty. The people were quieted 
by this act of Providence, and murmured no more. We 
caught enough to eat plentifully of till we got into the capes 
of Delaware." 

5. Offered: The subject is "Who," six lines above. 



186 NOTES 

6. Child of Abraham : Consult Genesis xxii, 13. 

7. Our uncle : How do the tales told by the uncle differ 
from those told by the mother and father? 

142, 1. Lyceum: Characteristic of the era in New Eng- 
land was the lyceum, a building or an association for the 
teaching of the people by public lectures. Many persons who 
had scanty opportunities for schooling were able to acquire 
a fair education by attendance at the lyceum and by reading. 
Whittier himself thus gained much. In his later years he 
became an enthusiastic patron of the Amesbury Lyceum; 
there such men as Beecher and Phillips lectured at his invi- 
tation. In recognition of his attainments he received, the 
year of the publication of "Snow-Bound," the Harvard 
honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, and three years later, in 
1869, was made a trustee of Brown University. 

2. Apollonius : Apollonius of Tyana was regarded as a 
worker of miracles. He lived in the time of Christ. 

3. Hermes: Compare Milton's lyric, "II Penseroso." 
Hermes Trismegistus was an Egyptian philosopher who lived 
in Alexandria early in the Christian era. He is said to have 
invented the art of writing in hieroglyphics. 

4. White of Selborne : Gilbert White, author of Natural 
History and Antiquities of Selborne, m said by the poet to 
have magnified the Surrey hills of southern England just as 
the simple, guileless uncle magnified ^the common features 
of his immediate neighborhood in northeastern Massachu- 
setts. 

143, 1. The dear aunt : The verb for this subject is found 
in the first line of page 144. What was the character of the 
aunt? How do you picture her personal appearance? Miss 
Hussey had the reputation of making the best squash pies 
that were ever baked. 

144, 1. Warp of circumstance: In " Snow-Bound," 
Whittier himself weaves through the warp of circumstantial 
details of his home life something of the woof- thread of 
poetical romance. The details do not seem merely petty 



SNOW-BOUND 187 

and commonplace, but through the spirit of the writer be- 
come invested with poetic sentiment and charm. In the 
history of literature, Whittier belongs to the great world- 
movement spoken of on page 27, his first model being a 
leader in that movement, Robert Burns. Whittier's par- 
ticular part in the movement, as exemplified in his "Snow- 
Bound," is that of the accurate, sensible observer of rustic 
life. In contrast to Longfellow, who is the cultured library- 
poet, Whittier stands for specificness and accuracy of homely 
observation. Whittier's minuteness of detail is admirably 
suggested by his ow-n phrase on page 159 when he speaks of 
his poem as containing " Flemish pictures of old days." The 
Flemish artists were distinguished by their attention to 
minute detail. In the particular phase of literature known 
as American, Whittier is one of the chief writers of the group 
of New England poets who, about the time of the publication 
of his first poem, entered upon a long period of literary 
supremacy in America. 

2. But: Part of speech? 

3. Beside : What other examples do you notice of prepo- 
sitions following their objects? 

145, 1. Never outward swings: It is a beautiful, pathetic 
figure of speech by w T hich the poet thus refers to the death 
of his elder sister. 

2. Motley-braided : Braided in many colors, like the old- 
fashioned rag carpets still to be seen in some country dis- 
tricts. Note that Whittier uses few hyphenated adjectives, in 
contrast to Tennyson, for instance, in his Idylls of the King. 

3. One little year ago : Whittier's younger sister died in 
1864, the year before he wrote the poem. 

146, 1. A loss in all familiar things: In his biography of 
Whittier, George R. Carpenter refers to the memory mood 
in which the poem was written: " It was an old man, tender- 
hearted, who thus drew the portraits of the circle of which 
he and his brother alone survived. The mood was one of 
wistful and reverential piety — the thoughtful farmer's 



188 NOTES 

mood, in many a land, under many a religion, recalling the 
ancient scenes more clearly as his memory for recent things 
grows less secure, living with fond regret the departed days, 
yearning for friends long vanished. Our changed national 
life, the passing away of the old agricultural conditions, the 
breaking up of ancient traditions, has made this wistful and 
reverential mood a constant element in our recent literature. 
In poems and novels we have delighted to reconstruct the 
past, as the Arab-singers before Mohammed began their 
lays with the contemplation of a deserted camping-ground. 
It was Whittier that introduced the new theme, best described 
in the closing lines of his own poem." 

147, 1. Master of the district school: Compare Gold- 
smith's village schoolmaster in " The Deserted Village." It 
is said that William Haskell, the schoolmaster of Whittier's 
poem, never knew that he had been described in the poem. 

2. Experience : One of the subjects of the verb " made," 
on page 148. 

148, 1. Rustic party: Are the three games mentioned still 
played at parties? 

2. Pindus-born Arachthus : The Arachthus is one of five 
rivers which rise in Pindus, the great mountain-chain of 
Greece. 

3. Olympus : The Grecian mountain on the top of which 
the gods were said to dwell. Like Charles Lamb, also lack- 
ing college education, Whittier ,. ; is even fonder of classical 
allusions than the college trained Longfellow. 

149, 1. Plant: This is one of the verbs in the series 
beginning "shall . . . assail," whose subject is "Who." 

2. Another guest : Harriet, daughter of Judge Livermore, 
of New Hampshire, a woman of great abilities and peculiari- 
ties. She was once an independent missionary to the western 
Indians, whom she believed to be the descendants of the lost 
tribes of Israel. At another time she went about proclaiming 
the second coming of Christ (see page 151). Her travels are 
not exaggerated by the poet. 



SNOW-BOUND 189 

150, 1. Heat-lightnings: A bold metaphor. 

2. Petruchio's Kate: In The Taming of the Shrew by- 
Shakespeare. 

3. Siena's saint : St. Catherine. 

151, 1. Crazy Queen of Lebanon : Lady Hester Stanhope, 
daughter of the third Earl Stanhope. She was the most 
trusted confidante of her uncle, William Pitt; on his death 
she received a royal pension of £1200 a year. Becoming 
disgusted with society life, she retired for a while into Wales, 
and in 1810 left England to wander about until her death in 
1829 among the half savage people of Mount Lebanon. 
Harriet Livermore lived with her for a time until the two 
quarreled " in regard to two white horses with red marks on 
their backs which suggested the idea of saddles," on which 
Lady Stanhope expected to ride into Jerusalem with the Lord. 

152, 1. But He, etc. : The meaning is as follows: But He 
who understands our physical limitations is just, merciful, 
and compassionate; and the words, He remembers we are 
dust, are full of sweet assurances and hope for all of us. 

153, 1. At last: Note the transition phrase. Having 
gathered the family around the hearth and given us their 
stories and pictures, the poet breaks up his family circle with 
the dying of the fire, that evening. 

156, 1. Quaker matron's inward light: The Quakers be- 
lieved that within themselves there burned a light from God 
which should guide each one independently in his daily acts. 

2. Calvin's creed: Born in 1509, John Calvin spent most 
of his life in Geneva, Switzerland, preaching certain specific 
religious doctrines which came to be called Calvinism: 1. 
Particular Election; 2. Particular Redemption; 3. Moral 
inability in a fallen state; 4. Irresistible grace; 5. Final 
perseverance. The Puritans were rigid Calvinists, stern 
and austere in their beliefs, but stirred by an intensely ideal, 
imaginative faith. 

3. Acid sect : See page 24 for light on Whittier's breadth 
of sympathy. 



190 NOTES 

4. Scarce a score : Probably no American poet had fewef 
books in boyhood than Whittier. At home he had access to 
a few miscellaneous volumes, mostly sermons, tracts, biog- 
raphies, or journals of famous Quakers. He and his sister 
read at night by candles one of the Waverley novels. The 
book of poetry referred to four lines below was an epic poem, 
Davideis, by the Quaker poet, Thomas Elwood, a friend of 
John Milton's. In his autobiographical letter Whittier says 
that as a boy he was a close student of the Bible. 

5. The heathen Nine : The nine muses. 

6. Village paper: Whittier's description of the general 
contents of the village paper of his boyhood needs explana- 
tion with regard to several points. The "painted Creeks" 
referred to on page 157 were the Creek Indians at that time 
being removed from Georgia and driven beyond the Missis- 
sippi. "Daft McGregor" was Sir Gregor McGregor who was 
attempting to found a colony in Costa Rica. " Taygetus " 
was a mountain of Greece. " Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks" 
were inhabitants of the mountainous district of Maina, in 
the Greek province of Laconia. The Mainotes, pronounced 
mi-nots, were a wild, brave people who, under the leadership 
of Ypsilanti, were prominent in the long war for freedom 
from the Turks. " Vendue sales," page 157, were sales at 
auction, still common in the central part of New York state 
under the name " vandoo." The point of the whole descrip- 
tion is in the fifth from the last line on page 157, where the 
word " embargo " means restraint, and where it is suggested 
that the village newspaper broke the bounds of the snow and 
let the thoughts of the household move out across the world. 

The interest that Whittier had in the local paper after he 
was nineteen was often greatly increased by his seeing his 
poems in print. It is said that the first newspaper containing 
a poem of his was thrown to him in the field where he was 
working with his uncle. 

159, 1. Truce of God: An allusion to a formal cessation 
of baronial petty warfare in the middle ages. The church 



SNOW-BOUND 191 

forbade any baron to attack another between sunset on 
Wednesday and sunrise on the following Monday. The 
point of the allusion is that the poet hopes that the worldly 
man's eyes in some reminiscent moment when he has broken 
loose from the struggle of life shall grow wet with tears as 
he thinks of his boyhood winter joys. 

2. Thanks untraced : The last twenty lines of " Snow- 
Bound " beautifully convey the poet's idea of the mission and 
the reception of his poem. 



EXAMINATION QUESTIONS 

I. THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 

1. What is a vision? What is a knight? 

2. What did the knight, Sir Launfal, see in his vision? 

3. What does the poem contain in addition to the vision 
itself? 

4. What customs of the days of chivalry are referred 
to in the poem? Where else have you read about the doings 
of knights? 

5. What was the Holy Grail? How did Sir Launfal 
in his vision find the Grail? 

6. Suppose your class is going to have an entertainment 
at Christmas. Suppose each pupil is going to write or 
print a Christmas card. Write a stanza to be used on the 
card that you contribute. Probably a sentiment suggested 
by Lowell's poem might make a good basis for your verse- 
making; for instance, the spirit of giving, good cheer to 
rich and poor, thankful hearts, humility, nature's gifts, the 
Christmas fireside. 

7. What lines from Lowell's poem would be appropriate 
for use on a Christmas card? 

8. Suppose that a bronze tablet in honor of James Rus- 
sell Lowell is to be erected in a Hall of Fame. What in- 
scription would be good for such a tablet? What might a 
speaker say at the time when the tablet is unveiled? 

9. Discuss: June and December — a contrast and a com- 
parison. 

10. What does your family do when a tramp comes to 
the door asking for food? 

11. In what respects would it be impossible to carry out 

193 



194 EX AM I NAT I OX QUESTIOXS 

the idea of democracy given in the last four lines of The 
Vision of Sir LaunfcU? 

II. THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 

1. In a common history of the United States or in an 
encyclopedia, read the account of Massachusetts colonial 
life, and compare it with Longfellow's poem, in contents 
and form. 

2. Condense the entire poem into a single narrative 
paragraph of about one hundred and fifty words, using 
as topic sentence a statement of the theme of the poem. 

3. As an exercise in the evaluation of words, add to 
your paragraph or subtract from it so as to make it pre- 
cisely one hundred and fifty words long. 

4. From what you have read of Longfellow's fife and 
works, do you think he might have made a successful 
novel out of the material contained in this poem, if he 
had tried? Give reasons for your answer. 

5. The courtship in some novel that you have read 
contrasted with that related in the poem. 

6. A courtship as disclosed in a package of old letters 
or in a dozen souvenir postal cards. 

7. (a.) Character studies in the poem. 

(6.) Do Miles Standish, John Alden, and Priscilla seem 
like real persons? 

8. Describe the house in which Standish lived. Sup- 
plement by your imagination the details of the poem. 

9. Describe the Captain. 

10. After reading Part I aloud, would you prefer to 
read the rest of the story in poetry or in prose? Reasons. 

11. The picture that is in your mind of the scene 
between Alden and Priscilla in Part III. 

12. Could you keep your face straight while you were 
reading of the proposal? Why or why not? 

13. Do the girls like this part of the poem best? 



EXAMINATION QUESTIONS 195 

14. Do the boys prefer Part IV to Part III? 

15. Are you more interested in the descriptions or 
in the exciting passages? Why? 

16. Do you enjoy reading aloud any part of the poem? 

17. Describe Alden's new habitation. 

18. Would you omit any of the lines of the poem? 
If so, which? 

19. Describe the wedding procession. 

20. Write nine sentences each containing in your 
own words the substance of one of the parts of the 
poem. 

.21. Imaginary account of the courtship of Miles 
Standish and Rose. 

22. Indian stories that you know. 

23. Narratives of several battles. 

24. Accounts of pioneer life. 

25. A wedding. 

26. What makes Longfellow's poem more interesting 
than Poe's? 

27. The place of "The Courtship of Miles Standish" 
in the history of literature. 

III. SNOW-BOUND 

1. Early nineteenth century farm life of New England. 

2. What do your grandparents say about the truth- 
fulness of the picture given in Whittier's winter idyl? 

3. The meaning of idyl. 

4. Even though you have never lived on a farm, can 
you appreciate and enjoy Whittier's poem? 

5. If you have lived on a farm, are you prepared to 
say that the poem seems true to life? 

6. The family described in "Snow-Bound." 

7. Nine pictures of real persons. 

8. Description of the storm, of the barn, of the house, 
and of the scenes outside the house. 



196 EXAMINATION QUESTIONS 

9. Description of a snow-storm that has kept 
from school. 

10. Experiences sliding down straw-stacks, le», 
from beams in the barn into the haymow, trying to : j. : 
cows or do other farm chores. 

11. Description of a fine new hip-roofed barn. 

12. A lonely farmhouse in winter. 

13. Summer scenes on a farm that you have visaed. 

14. Winter and summer in the city. 

15. Explain how to build a furnace fire, or how to ut 
kindling, or how to keep from being run over. 

16. The relative advantages of city and country ii . 

17. Chores of a city boy. 

18. Life in a city apartment or flat contrasted with a 
boyhood life of Whittier. 

19. State in a few words the theme of "Snow-Bonn. ." 
and then in one paragraph write a well-proportionec 1 b a i- 
mary of the entire poem. 

20. Whittier 's life as a reformer and poet. 

21. Whom do you admire the most, — Poe, Longfe'! 
or Whittier? Why? 

22. On comparing Whittier's "Snow-Bound ' ui ■ 
Emerson's "Snow-Storm," what difference do you c ?serv 
in the metrical form and in the contents? 

23. Using your imagination to fill out the detail- /' 
as vividly as you can, with gestures if they will help ' 
full picture that is in your mind of the persons gath'^e I 
around the hearth in the evening. Do not tell any of « he 
conversation, simply describe the scene at some mome.t. 

24. The fireside conversation. 

25. Name six American and six English political ard 
literary contemporaries of Whittier. 

26. The characteristics of the literary era to which 
Whittier belonged. (See page 27.) 

27. Do you like " Snow-Bound " better than either " The 
Raven "or "The Courtship of Miles StandishJJ? Reasons. 

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